The Willed Future
by ToBetasered
Summary: The Great Alliance lives again. The Ascended members of the SGC past and future recall the greatest adventures of their mortal lives as a new saga begins.
1. Chapter 1

**This story is a work of fanfiction and any similarities to the characters of any television, film or literary work is completely intentional. The author does not in any way shape or form profit from the following work nor claims any responsibility for the efforts of others. Said author acknowledges that they simply weren't cool enough to think of something like this on their own. The following story is a fanfiction cross-over. **

**The Willed Future**

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They looked on as their descendants proceeded with the titanic endeavor. The potential that they had long ago foreseen within these children all those millions of years ago had finally come to fruition. There were many who contemplated returning to the physical realm to share in new adventures as equals. There were a few who had already done so. There were others who yet remained to observe from a higher plane of existence as their second evolution tackled problems that had plagued their ancestors and found solutions that equaled if not exceeded the works of their forebears. The gateway that they had created was an achievement as monumental and potentially troublesome as the first Astria Porta.

Even as he watched the final preparations the ascended being once known as Daniel Jackson could not help but contemplate how far mankind had come nor recall how easily it could have fallen both to threats without and within. The Great Alliance had once again been reborn and by this time had stood for nearly half the length of time that its previous incarnation had lasted.

An alliance that still lasted as the Nox and Alterans yet existed, the Asgard lived on in the spirit of the fifth race if nothing more. There was talk of one day seeding a few worlds of the Ida Galaxy with proto-forms of Asgard life, but such an undertaking required careful study, millennia of planning and constant observation to ensure that what life came into being did not constitute a threat to the survival of the species of the alliance and more importantly that those beings who were created were wisely and responsibly cared for.

The Terrans had learned from the errors of the Alterans and through hardship the races of the Alliance had learned to treat the words of the Nox with the careful deliberation that they deserved. Parenthood on the individual level was a daunting task and on the level of creating an entire species was an exercise of love, hardship and care, where too much or too little could lead to disaster. The Cimmerian Trbal Home Worlds were adamant in their lobby but the magnitude of the task required deep deliberation from all involved.

As Daniel Jackson viewed the entirety of the Milky Way Galaxy in his mind, a place known to the Alterans as Avalon, he contemplated the fact that the alliance territory actually encompassed three Galaxies. The Origin Galaxy so named by the members of the Human Systems Confederation founded by Tomin, and the Lantea Galaxy named by the Federation of Allied World and Atlantis. Combined with the Terran Federation, the Jaffa Federation and numerous other species and territories in Avalonan Galaxy's United Federation of Allied Systems, the Great Races Alliance had attained a size and power that greatly dwarfed its predecessor and was still growing. More than twelve trillion known sentient life-forms and thanks to the actions of the Alterans, the machinations of the Goa'uld and the pseudo-benevolent plots of the Ori nearly nine trillion of these life-forms were humans, human-like, human-hybrids or modified humans like the Jaffa.

The Ori had long ago exterminated the majority of non-human life-forms in the Origin Galaxy in their quest to maximize the amount of power that could be extracted from the worship of their followers. The Wraith of the Lantea Galaxy had held to only one type of diplomatic tactic when dealing with species that were not compatible food sources or were possible sources of competition, extermination.

While the Avalonan Galaxy still held several thousand species of space-faring and non-space-faring, non-human species the Goa'uld had dominated most of the Galaxy for close to six millennia, spreading their human slave races across conquered worlds ever since the System Lord Ra discovered the viability of humans as a new type of host body. The irony of the situation was that predominance of humans in galactic and extragalactic affairs was entirely the work of various superior species and at least one egomaniacal group of parasites with a tendency toward megalomania and delusions of grandeur.

"The meek really did inherit the galaxy." Daniel muttered.

"What was that space-monkey? I didn't hear ya." Someone called out from behind him.

Turning around in response, the vastness of space was replaced by the scene of a familiar sixties diner. The patrons of the of the cozy eatery were clustered around square tables muttering to each other with rare excitement while periodically pointing to an article in copies of a newspaper that they all held. One of the waitresses was a short dark-haired woman with an aristocratic nose and angular cheek bones who simultaneously winked at Daniel, refilled cups of coffee and pocketed a stolen watch in an oddly bulging apron.

Shaking his head in exasperation Daniel made his way to the counter where he waved away a waitress who went back to talking to a handsome dark-haired cook with rolled up sleeves after she placed a plate, heaped full of hash browns, eggs and gravy on a tray that was passed along by a dusky-skinned waitress to a slightly over-weight man who was currently berating his thin, wild-haired companion over some trivia of unified field theory in imaginary dimensions of unique spin flavor. At the other end of the counter, a grey-haired man was filling out a crossword puzzle while pointedly ignoring the taunts from a couple of eighteen year old boys who hung over his shoulders like the devil and angel characters from old cartoons.

One of the boys was of Arab descent and leaned away as he smirked playfully at something that the other boy, who could have passed for the son of the grey-haired man, had said. A younger blond woman and a muscular black man, with a solid horizontal strip of white hair passing around the back of his head from temple to temple looked on in poorly restrained amusement. After glaring at the harrying teens, the grey-haired man seemed to look at Daniel with visible relief as he sat next to the blond.

"Jack-"

"What's a nine letter word for a very satisfactory state of being?" Jonathan 'Jack' O'Neill, two l's, asked.

"You're not supposed to tell him Daniel." Samantha 'Sam' Carter interrupted as Daniel began to respond.

"Indeed, O'Neill has come very far in the two hundred years since he started this puzzle; I have faith that he will finish it on his own, eventually." Added Teal'c.

Shooting the two a dirty look Jack instead decided to follow up on his first question, the one that had drawn Daniel's attention.

"So how's it going?"

"Well, I was just thinking about how far things have come since we first found the Stargate, who would have thought that it would have lead to this? They're building an inter-dimensional gateway now." Daniel answered.

For a second Jack looked pensive, before stating, "Shouldn't they be exploring their own universe, or maybe doing something useful like, fishing?"

Sam rolled her eyes but initially spoke up in agreement, "There are already several expeditions to other Galaxies they should be supporting but they've also been planning this mission since they rediscovered how to create a quantum mirror. To be fair, if they can master this method of travel then the exploration of distant galaxies should be even easier to undertake, I have to admit that it sounds exciting."

Daniel smiled at the woman's enthusiasm but Jack raised an eyebrow as he raised another important point. "What about the endothermic facade whatchamacallit?"

"It's called the entropic cascade effect and they were trying to get around that problem by opening a portal to a completely divergent quantum reality, in theory the effects should not be as pronounced as it would be if they were to travel to a parallel earth. They've already launched multiple probes to measure the rate of entropic failure and so far it seems like they've accounted for that possibility and they do have ways of counteracting the effects until they can hopefully return. There shouldn't be any problems" Sam lectured.

A broad-chested man with graying brown hair sitting behind them snorted so hard at those words that he dropped the spoon that he was balancing on the end of his nose. After glancing at the man and Vala who had come over to see what the commotion was about Jack began to sneer sarcastically. "If I had a nickel… You'd think that after all that we've been through someone would finally get a clue, that messing with the weird, glowing ring/pedestal/box/door/book/wall ornament/jewel/chair/bug/plant/crystal/mushroom/nipple-ring/what have you, especially if you don't know what it is, especially if its humming, humming _and_ glowing! Is a bad idea! It's like humanity's mission is to go where no-one has gone before, and to piss 'em off in new and interesting ways."

Sam sighed and Daniel looked as if he was going to speak up but it was Teal'c who spoke his mind. "Indeed O'Neill, I have found that humans have a curious tendency to engage in what may at the time seem like ill-advised endeavors that others would find in their best interests to avoid. I have witnessed this tendency bring disaster to many human civilizations, yet I feel I should point out O'Neill that this trend has also resulted in many of your race's greatest achievements..." Looking at his companions with a measured gaze he finished his sentence with a slight nod of respect. "You learn from your mistakes and grow and improve becoming more than you were before."

It was the lightening of the atmosphere of anxiety in the diner that alerted the small group to the fact that all of the occupants had actually been eavesdropping on their conversation. The Alterans were worried. Jack shrugged with an unconcerned air and went back to his crossword puzzle uttering only a final bit of wisdom. "I wonder how's the fishing in that quantum reality?"

"Copasetic." Vala said.

"Whuh?" Jack turned to her puzzled.

"The word that you're looking for, copasetic, a condition that's very satisfactory or acceptable, copasetic." She answered with her hands on her hips. "I don't know what you're all so worried about, compared to what the Alliance went through before I doubt that you have much to worry about. Right Daniel?"

Daniel was already remembering the early days of the Alliance when the Wraith and Micheal were still a threat and for all intents and purposes the Terran Federation was largely on it's own with sporadic help from the Tok'Ra, the Jaffa Nation and very rarely, the Nox. He thought back to the days that he had lived in a physical body, the founding of the fledgling Earth Space Forces and the machinations of the most annoying megalomaniac that SGC had ever encountered. He remembered the war he had caused that had very nearly turned an annoyance into the means of extinction of all humans on earth.

They sat together in a diner that was not a diner thinking about the past and the willed future.

"Do you think we should warn them?" Daniel asked.

The others paused and considered the proposal.

"Nah" Jack said after a moment's contemplation. "They'll do just fine. We did good, didn't we?"

Those at the counter shared an intent look as Daniel silently informed the Others of the fact that he was just going to keep an eye on things. After all, what could go wrong?

Vala grinned and threw an arm around Daniel's shoulders, "Sounds interesting…What were we talking about? And what's my take?"

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**Terran Federation Space Binary Star System Symplegades**

The structure floating in the depths of space at first glance would have fooled the eye into believing it was much smaller than it actually was. Those who were familiar with the superficial design, among whom numbered the combined races of the Great Alliance, would have recognized what seemed to be two disconnected halves of a Star Gate like the ones located in what was formerly called the Pegasus Dwarf Galaxy, Lantea.

The true scale of the construct could only be understood once one realized that the outer circumference of each half-ring when joined together was a little more than half that of the circumference of the stars that composed the lifeless binary system. However, what was staggering about the scale of the construct to the onlookers was not simply its size but the fact that the entire project had only taken fifty years to complete and twenty five of those years involved lobbying for permission to begin construction and the allocation of sufficient resources. This was of course after several centuries of failure due to the governing council's stance that the Alliance wasn't yet ready for the challenge that such an endeavor would present and the need for more research into the safety of the technology.

Some had argued that in the first days of the Stargate program, the event that was widely credited for setting the humans of Earth firmly on the path to the stars, the legendary Jack O'Neill the First and Daniel Jackson, subjects of many historical studies, hadn't known if they would return once they stepped through the Stargate or if the artifact that they were going to use was really anything other than an elaborate guillotine or molecular blender. Those who were for the construction of the dimensional gate felt that the potential risk was worth the gains, those who were against using it felt that humans had thankfully evolved past the stage of leaping without wondering just where they would land.

The technology was in actuality born from the McKay-Carter Dimensional Bridge theory one of the possible solutions put forward by those seeking to improve upon the ZPM design using what was learned at the Alteran science station Avaria and from Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay's first stint in an Alteran evolution accelerator. The theory behind the ZPE or zero point energy extractor was that it drew its energy not from subspace or local space but from a parallel reality. The problem that had been encountered was that the method of extraction warped the physical laws of the local region of space where the extraction process occurred.

This prevented the accurate prediction of the proliferation of exotic particles and the formation of containment fields capable of shielding against the hard radiation that resulted. The McKay-Carter Theory and the McKay mathematical proof allowed for the interaction between parallel realities. This could be used to extract dark energy from another reality, while at the same time leaving the problem of dealing with the exotic particles that formed as a result of extraction in a separate universe.

The problem with this approach had been that finding realities where no life existed was much harder than first thought. The problem had been that most inter-dimensional windows that opened into parallel realties were attracted to realities similar to the one in which the Alliance existed as stated in the Hailey-Lingham Theory. Finding an uninhabited quantum reality had turned into a game of roulette with the odds stacked against the player.

The solution to this was the re-discovery of the theory of Quantum Tuning. Through centuries of experimentation and pooling resources with oblique aid from the Nox, the Alliance had gained the ability to crudely seek out dimensions using a method of exclusion. After a few decades of encountering both good and evil twins from other realities the ability to discriminate against parallel realities had been partially attained and the ability to enter divergent quantum realities was in part, gained. Sentient beings throughout the Alliance celebrated; then they buckled down for a war of elimination against a genocidal race of giant telepathic squids. As a great Jaffa warrior once said, "The more things changed, the more they stayed the same."

The Nox had partially withdrawn during this period from Galactic affairs after typically offering cryptic advice on how to deal with the problem. The Psychic War had seen a marked rise in interest in the study of metaphysics throughout the Alliance. The worlds that had been settled by people with these talents pooled their knowledge together under the guidance of the Nox with the stipulation that their talents would never be used to create Psionic Weapons. While many races had protested this stipulation as an imposition that the Nox had no right to make, the worlds with peoples who possessed metaphysical talents had long held the Nox in high esteem and they along with the larger population of organic and inorganic life-forms that composed the Great Alliance agreed with the Nox.

The Alteran upgraded Asgard based shield technology and the O'Niell Crystal Defense Screens presented a powerful defense against the psychic weapons used by the Intruders. These were weapons that acted on hyperspace and subspace carrier frequency bands directly transmitting a type of metaphysical psychic intrusion to the crews on board Alliance ships.

Unfortunately when things had first began to go spinward the Alliance taskforce that had been charged with guarding the experimental Quantum Gate had been composed almost entirely of a Jaffa Federation dreadnought, mother ships and mid-class Ha'taks. While the Jaffa Dreadnought vessels were the most formidable ships of their class exceeded only in sheer firepower by the defense stations of the Core Worlds of the Alliance and the Langaran Battle Moons these vessels were not shielded against psychic intrusion.

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**The following is a record of the 666****th**** activation of the quantum gate during Project Symplegades as taken from the mission records of Colonel Victor Stromner TFSF Cmnd. DSB Ajax and Colonel Dr. Anezka Dvorak TFSF Cmnd. DSRC Radek Zelenka. **

A mature human male sat in an ergonomic chair that seemed to be made from a glowing blue liquid. The chair looked as if it was molded to the form of the man sitting in it and it seemed to be suspended above the floor by nothing other than faint threads of light visible as they stretched across its base and back, fading from sight as they came out of contact with the chair, looking like a delicate spider-web. The man seemed to be in his late forties, mid-fifties and had graying dark hair that burned silver at the temples in the brilliant light of the small room.

His elbows were propped on the armrests of the seat that was made from the same gel-like substance. His hands were clasped in his lap instead of in the complex bed of viscous psuedo-crystalline circuitry that pooled in the hand-rests. A virtual desk made of coherent light and ions held in suspended fields of bosonic force was arranged before the man and on this desk and floating above it were several reports of seemingly similar insubstantiality.

Images flickered about quickly as lines of information and raw data scrolled through the air, quickly replaced by holographic displays of three dimensional objects that revolved in place quickly before settling on a display of what seemed to be a fleet of disparately designed spacecrafts. The man blinked and all other displays cancelled, bringing up a enlarged view of the fleet. His attention seemed to be particularly focused on a single craft more than any other.

It looked like a wedge-shaped isosceles based pyramid that was turned on the widest face relative to the system plane. The widest face was 720 meters in width at the base and the entire body was 1242 meters in length. The other two faces were 440 meters in length at their base. Three massive neutrino-ion engines were attached to the base of the vessel and eighteen comparatively smaller gravimetric projectors were attached in groups of six along the vertices of the craft for maneuvering, deceleration and use in deflection force screens.

Array upon array of directed energy weapons covered every available surface of the Star Destroyer themed vessel that was designed by and made for Jaffa. Shielded launch silos for antimatter/naquadriah missiles that were of a design vaguely reminiscent of Alteran drones, naquadah-enhanced, cherenkov energy masers, and well, as Colonel General Jonathan 'Jack O'Neill once said, big honkin' space guns were arranged in staggered rows along the length of the hull on three of the four faces along with disguised and heavily armored shield projectors on all four surfaces.

Weapons like these composed the vessel's arsenal along with twenty-four squadrons of which eight wings were made of 192 aerospace domination gliders while the other four wings were divided between twelve heavily shielded troop transports and thirty-two cloaked and shielded bombers capable of carrying ground, orbital and anti-capital ship bombardment and weapons load-outs. three massive flight bays were capable or raising out of the hull on each face opening toward the rear of the ship behind massive rear-facing cannons and anti-fighter batteries.

Point defense and close in anti-fighter support was provided by weapons platforms capable of firing phase-modulated bolts of plasma constrained within a degrading subspace bubble the size of a late twentieth century Terran city bus at a classified rate of fire that was well capable of lighting up a region of space within a range of fifty thousand kilometers with incandescent bolts of neon yellow plasma. The point defense batteries sacrificed range for power as the dynamic energy fields that contained the plasma could only contain the glowing star fire for a few seconds before releasing their payload in clouds of high energy particles.

The shields were based off of designs used by the former System Lord Anubis to protect his vessels and had been upgraded over the centuries in accordance with the twenty-fourth century Terran and Tollan Remnant Treaties.

To things sum up, a 1242 meter long Jaffa Federation Dreadnought was a super carrier with the equivalent of half of a Lagrangian Defense System's fighter compliment and capable of carrying more during war time. These vessels put emphasis on offensive weaponry with lesser priority on shields that while not as powerful as the ones found in the Terran Federation or the Human Systems Alliance could endure a frightening amount of damage before failing. In turn a Jaffa Dreadnought's all weapons strike was capable of cracking an unshielded planet open and reducing the pieces to rubble.

In the Captain's console a mental command brought forward an image of what appeared to be an ordinary asteroid save for the ridiculously high energy readings and the planetary weapons installations visible on its surface.

A Langaran Battle Moon mounted more destructive weaponry over a comparative surface area than that of a JF dreadnought but possessed of shields that were several orders weaker relying more on structural integrity fields, inertial dampening fields and heavy amour capable of withstanding multiple gigaton matter-antimatter veapons strikes. A few were in possession of planetary-grade shields reverse engineered from those left behind on the Langaran home-world after the end of the Ori War. The power generation requirements however meant that these systems could not be activated while the battle moon's primary ion cannons or hyperspace window generators were active and that hyperspace travel was much slower than the galactic standard for military craft.

The Alliance taskforce had been composed of the Dreadnought Ka'lel with a half-strength flight complement, two Bra'tac class Mother ships with two peace-time flight wings each, six Skywalker-class Midrange Ha'tak and one Langaran Battle Moon on loan to the Terran Federation. A McKay class science vessel supported by a single Orion-class Deep Space Battlecraft completed the taskforce.

Dark eyes set in a creased olive skinned face scanned the holographic display before sighing deeply. While on paper converting a mined out asteroid into a manned installation would have been an ideal economic solution for building a space station or orbital habitat, the Langarans had taken things a step further during the late twenty-third century and used the knowledge acquired from their then provisional membership in the Terran Federation to construct a mobile system defense network after the model of the mid twenty-first century Sol system defense. The difference though was that the Langarans had slapped on some hyperspace window generators and used the things as a heavily armed Mobile Space Battlestation.

The downside to their plan was that the Langaran Government had created too damn many of the things. The power systems and hyperspace generators were inefficient; the gravimetric projectors were vulnerable to attack and when compared mass to mass they moved the Battle Moon at velocities little better than twentieth century chemical rockets.

Due to the large economic drain that operating these mobile installations presented, the Battle Moon project had turned into a white elephant that no-one wanted to touch and only as a concession during intense negotiations in the interest of keeping the damned things out of the hands of the Lucien Alliance had the Terran Federation acquired six of the twelve behemoths, removed the hyperspace generators, put in more gravimetric projectors and a better shield system. Then they towed them through hyperspace and distributed them to protect outer-lying colonies and Colonial Space as semi-militarized orbital habitats.

As a result an Alliance science team was aboard the battle moon attempting to calibrate their sensors to take more accurate readings of the gate and what lay beyond it when the device was activated.

He had been against the activation and use of this device, making his opinion clear when asked to report to the General's Desk at HIGHCOM and it was perhaps for his skepticism that he had been placed in charge of protecting the science spacecraft that was directing the experiment. Since the isolated Binary star system they would be using was situated 'close' to the border of Jaffa Federation space in cosmological terms the majority of the vessels were under the Jaffa Banner and had been tasked with a different mission from his own. If anything that came through the gate seemed even remotely hostile the Dreadnought and its companion vessels would open fire and destroy anything coming through while the science teams worked to deactivate the gate.

A faint musical tone interrupted the man's musings and his eyes flickered to a holographic floating musical note. Silently acknowledging the signal Colonel Victor Stromner commander of the DSB Ajax issued a mental command that caused the energy fields, shields, and holographic projectors to collapse the bubble of force containing the illusionary whiteout that surrounded him and cut off all light and noise from the rest of the CDC save for emergency alarms and queries from his operations staff like the one that had interrupted him.

"-siR, Sir?" Senior Operations Officer Captain Katherine Yaxley spoke to him from her station on the second tier of the CDC, her voice warped slightly in his ear as the last of the privacy screen dissipated.

"Report!" Victor commanded.

"Commander Zhu of the Battle Moon Panangeneira has just signaled that his team has completed calibration of the sensor package and is ready for the Zelenka to send the Activation signal to the Gate." Yaxley stated in her calm and measured tone. "Major Hussein has indicated that his Marines have secured the facility and verified that the subspace transponders are nominal."

"Set Alert Condition One throughout the craft." Stromner ordered as he sent a mental query to the operations station causing the Shipboard Asgard AI Jarnsaxa to query the readiness of all duty station officers. In Victor's mind an abbreviated list of answers appeared showing that all CDC stations were nominal.

The Combat Direction Center or CDC was the tactical center of the battlecraft under the control of the craft's commanding officer. It was composed of three tiers each connected by three wide steps with the rest of the area separated and enclosed by five foot tall trinium-carbon-titanium barriers that surrounded each tier. The first and highest tier enclosed an area of 64 square meters enough space to seat a commander, embarked general officer and a civilian observer.

The second tier was a three meter wide strip three steps lower where the 2IC who held the position of Senior Operations Officer and two assistants worked. The third tier was a wider strip of area three steps lower than the second tier where different groups of action station officers worked including communications watch, engineering watch, defensive and offensive weaponry watch, defense screens watch, navigation, tactical and security. .

The only entrances or exits from the bridge normally was a sealed matter to energy transport room on the second tier that could only be used by CDC officers and was under the watch of a marine detail. It was deactivated during battle situations when the Commander was in the CDC and the only other method of entry was through a Neutronium blast door below and behind the CDC accessible from the third tier and guarded by marines in defensible positions on all three tiers.

The Ajax was a Battlecraft.

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The activation of the Dimensional gate was a beautiful thing to see. The two halves of the gate slowly moved together propelled by gravimetric drive systems. Upon completion of the assembly the Radek Zelenka sent the activation codes to the gate. Wisps of star fire was drawn from the twin red stars and danced around the ring before seeming to be absorbed by the gate. The activation of the device was obvious from the window of an alien field of red shifting light and nebulous clouds of gas that could be seen through the ring.

Later, data forwarded from the damaged Battle Moon to the Orion-class DSB Ajax before the vessel was forced to retreat under fire would eventually shed light on the incident that followed for OMI analysts. The first indication Colonel Dr. Anezka Dvorak had that the situation was going spinward for the DSRC Radek Zelenka was when her telemetry specialist Dr. Volgen assumed a fetal position and started muttering from the floor.

"P-power…beyond comprehension…hunger…hunger!"

Well, things got worse from there.

The science vessel DSRC Radek Zelenka had taken the risky move of lowered its primary shield system in order to fully utilize its impressive sensor suite to the fullest potential. It was the sensors that very nearly doomed the vessel more than its lack of a primary shield. The research craft looked like a hexagonal cylinder, half the size of the Ajax measuring little more than 300 meters in length and approximately 100 meters in width. Its hull was covered in sensors under the O'Neill CS system and the craft was unarmed save for two silo's capable of carrying up to twenty Terran designed variable payload drones used more for research than combat.

The telemetry officer had been among the first to fall under the thrall of the invader's signal being received by the sensors. The weapons control officers on several Jaffa ships including the one aboard the Dreadnaught Ka'lel had also fallen under alien influence and had fired upon and destroyed a Mother ship and damaged another before he was wrestled to the ground by his vessel's second in command.

So when the space around the opened gate lit up with weapons fire from half of the Jaffa Federation ships while cover was provided by the other ships Anezka didn't apologize for kicking her crazed defense screens officer out of the way and undoing the damage caused by the man in order to raise shields. The battle moon and dreadnought were engaged in a pitched battle and less than twenty minutes later there was confirmed contact with the unknown life-forms beyond the gate.

The sensor logs would later reveal the existence of mental patterns being broadcast to all ships using the lens effect of hyperspace on subspace carrier waves to magnify the power of their psychic weapon's tachyon emissions. The shields of the DSB Ajax had been fully activated from the moment that the gate had been opened and had proven immune to the influence of the carrier wave weapon and largely unaffected by the massive plasma bolts unleashed by the alien's titanic ships which were slow moving and easily avoided. Even in their confused state the task force had managed to destroy several of the vessels called caldera ships by OMI analysts due to the way that their primary and only weapon fired in massive eruptions.

The Science vessel had withstood several direct hits from the cauldron ships before being hit with a full salvo of antimatter/naquadriah missiles that overloaded the shield capacitors and initiated a catastrophic failure in the O'Neill Crystal Shield system nearly breaching hull of the ship. The Commander of the craft had only enough time to order the ships AI Huur to transmit a warning and the collected data to a HIGHCOM relay satellite before a second salvo aimed at the automatically sealing recovering system arrived.

The only thing that saved the vessel from being filled with hard radiation and nuclear fire was the blitz of defensive fire from the Panangeneira. A second later the Ajax was in a screening position between the dreadnaught and the research craft and the Marines aboard the Battle Moon had set the power core of the battle station to overload sacrificing all power including life support to the main plasma cannon array destroying the ships coming through the gate.

The Marines and the science teams were taken aboard the Ajax which quickly followed the Radek Zelenka in a retreat through hyperspace after Colonel Anezka lost control of the gate deactivation program. Probes sent into the system a half hour later would find that the taskforce had been annihilated and the system fortified by the intruders. It would take the better part of a year to drive the invaders back and the controversial use of the ZPE system to irradiate the Invader's universe with exotic particles to win the Psychic War.

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In the end the data gained from the final test had allowed the Terran Federation to gain access to an infinite number of divergent realities many of which were found to be devoid of life. And a few held life forms that greatly interested Alliance scientists especially those interested in resurrecting the Asgard genome.

After many more years of lobbying in the early twenty-sixth century, the Aliance would once again move into the unknown of the Willed Future.

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**Battlecraft Profile:** Orion Class Deep Space Battlecraft

**Length:** 662 meters

**Width:** 410 meters at propulsion block

**Height:** 250 meters

**Offensive/Defensive Weapons: **Four hundred type one dedicated combat drones, two hundred type two variable payload drones, two hyperspace-enhanced, neutrino ion accelerators, six phased plasma beam cannons, two of which are rear mounted, 16 exotic particle weapons placements, 42 naquadah/yttrbrium/helium point defence masers, quantum teleportation array, Tollan ion beam weapons array, weapon emplacement fabrication grid. Spherical feild of fire.

**Defense Screens:** Asgard based shielding using partial application of the Mackay Alteran shield upgrade algorithm. O'Neill Crystal Shield Defense Grid using partial application of McKay algorithm. Gravimetric force deflectors. Inertial and energy dampeners contain educe the damage caused by explosions and physical impacts.

**Armour:**Trinium-Carbon-Naquadah hull one meter thick and energized, Neutronium-trinum support frame.

**Engines:**Asgard hyperspace window projector systems utilizing Carter-McKay Ancient hyper-drive engine upgrades. Carter-Hailey Neutrino Ion sub-light engines powered by one zero point energy module. Gravimetric maneuvering projectors.

**Notes:** Terran Federation Capital Military Spacecraft. Possesses artificial gravity, inertial dampening systems, energy dampening systems, localized bosonic forcefield technology, matter-energy transportation technology, matter replication technology, holographic systems, neural interfaces, nanotechnology repair systems, phase technology.

While these vessels are capable of being equipped with phase cloaking technology, such upgrades are currently prioritized for the Office of Military Intelligence and as of 2431 T.C.E were a controlled technology.

Battlecraft sacrifice carrier capacity for weapons emplacement and are equipped with a twelve compact antimatter-naquadriah generators six of which are on standby while the rest power tertiaryary systems. These craft also posses a secondary CDC a Combat Information Centre staffed by assigned OMI analysts along with secondary duty station officers and tactical staff.

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**AN: This is something that I've been working on in my spare time. It's a first for me trying to write a space drama and I ran into several blocks along the way particularly since I couldn't fid much in the way of research material on spacecraft design, military structure, and weaponry; and generally the economics and tactics involved. **

**It was hard enough deciding on a design for the Jaffa Federation Dreadnought. My first thought was let's do a Star Wars Star Destroyer, and the Battle Moon became a miniature Deathstar but then I went and read a helpful little article entitled Space is not an Ocean. **

**So feeling like an idiot I went back and corrected as many things as I could. I do have a good grounding in physics so I had already added the gravimetric engines as a literary device to help explain how they could possibly slow down something mounting an engine the size of a small apartment complex without flipping the spacecraft and pointing the engine in the opposite direction. Inertial dampeners were helpful too.**

**If the Battlecraft thing seemed a little bit forced, it's because I desperately wanted to avoid the using word ship. Starship, spaceship, battleship, science ship, mothership…oops.**

**Well I did what I could to avoid making the space/ocean connection. Just how the armed forces resolved the space-force, space navy issue is going to be in one of the following chapters. I'll try to include all of the various sources in the disclaimer but for the sake of my sanity I'll list them as the pop up.**

**Finally, I'd like to acknowledge that this story was inspired by a lot of things including two other fanfics that I have read however this won't be a carbon copy of them and the majority of the story will actually be taking place during a five hundred year period before this the events in this prologue. I'll be sure to proofread the content but I've rewritten this story several times so bear with me. TTFN. **


	2. Chapter 2

**This story is a work of fanfiction and any similarities to the characters of any television, film or literary work is completely intentional. The author does not in any way shape or form profit from the following work nor claims any responsibility for the efforts of others. Said author acknowledges that they simply weren't cool enough to think of something like this on their own. The following story is a stargate fanfiction cross over with multiple works. **

**Death, Be Not Proud**

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**Planet Eden 2517 CE 300CEE**

The wizened old man reclined in the comfortable wicker chair as he watched, entranced what would probably be his last sunset on this world. The magnificent blend of colors was beyond description as seen through the portrait window overlooking a wide strip of forest separated by a winding dirt track lefyearsading down to a mile long stretch of private beach.

From his vantage point the elderly man could see the faint outlines in the horizon indicating the islands of the artificially created archipelago whose volcanic rise from the sea floor had precipitated ash clouds, the final traces of which the old man had ordered to be left alone by the global environmental control system. The result of that order was the golden crimson glow of the sunlit sky at dawn and dusk streaked with hints of violet and pale gold.

Sixty-two percent of the planet was covered in water while the rest consisted of seven continental land masses roughly the size of Australia on Earth and a number of archipelagoes including at least two groups of islands respectively located in the northern and southern hemispheres that looked suspiciously like Great Britain and Ireland and an island chain ressembling the Hawaiian islands. As the last vestiges of light faded from the viewing portal the elderly man gave a heavy sigh.

There was a faint musical chime that was subtly uplifting in tone signaling a request for entry into the room. At a silent command a hole appeared in one of the walls of the hexagonal room, directly behind the man's chair.

Although he could not see it, a circular hole appeared in the wall and quickly expanded into a an arched entrance lined with a molding made of some strange gray metal inlaid with pale blue crystals and carvings of holly leaves and berries.

Standing at the entrance was a stunningly beautiful woman with auburn hair streaked with silver highlights. The faint lines about her eyes and mouth belied her stern expression and told a story of the smiles and laughter that would normally add to her beauty.

She was a thin slip of a woman standing at five feet six inches with the delicate features of her mother and the green eyes of her father and paternal grandmother.

She entered the room with a swaying grace that drew the eyes and held an air about her that silenced the mind and commanded respect.

Yet, as the woman entered the room her stern expression had momentarily changed to one of reverence and awe of the man before her, her eyes were filled with love, and sadness.

Regaining command of her visage with nary a break in her stride the lady made her way to the side of the sitting man and uttered in a melodious voice.

"It is time my Father."

Two pairs of green eyes met and held one another in a timeless gaze that spoke of years of familiarity with one another.

"It seems that your mothers have gone on ahead." The elder commented softly.

The auburn-haired woman swallowed thickly and lost her stern mask "Yes, they passed on while you were meditating... Oh! Don't leave us Father! We will surely be lost without you!"

The man looked on in pity as his daughter's eyes grew misty and he clenched her trembling hand in his own, banishing for the moment the illusion of frailty that hung about his worn frame.

When next he spoke the steel of his voice conveyed a sense of confidence and belief in his words.

"As the old wither away, the young blossom anew, remember daughter that we have taught you not to fear death, neither yours nor our own. Your parents have imparted to you all of our wisdom and I am proud of you Lily."

Raising her trembling hand to his lips the man watched as Lily carefully regained her composure.

Once she was again calm she turned to her father who stood and gave the man a tremulous smile. Taking a deep breath she sighed before firming her shoulders and with a single shared glance the two apparated into a large hall.

The two were instantly surrounded by a crowd of people both solicitous and tearful, young and old, short and tall, men and women.

Most of the people in the large hall seemed to share at least a passing familial resemblance to the two new arrivals.

While auburn-haired woman held up her hands for silence, the white-haired old man slowly lowered himself into a large throne-like chair atop a dais overlooking a large circular table.

The chair was composed of pale blue crystal and threads of silver metal and was situated at the end of the room. The table was made of six round, concentric, semi-circular strips of wood cut from the trunk of a massive tree.

Watching as his family chattered before him the elderly man sighed inwardly. He was unwilling to simply leave without much warning as his wives had done and had instead opted to clear up some of the confusion caused by an errant comment from one of his wives that was compounded by the explanation from another.

If he hadn't known them for the better part of five hundred years he would have wondered if they had done this on purpose as revenge for the many times that he had simply waltzed off on an adventure with little or no explanation.

He knew better of course; they **had** abandoned him to give explanations and calm frayed nerves to see what it felt like.

For several hours the man did nothing other than meet with an endless troupe of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

In a way it warmed him, he knew each and every one of these people by name.

He had touched their minds since infancy and shared in their childhood adventures. If nothing else, providing a safe and caring community to raise his children had always been one of his primary goals as a father.

Children, should not, be raised without the security of their parents. He believed that whole-heartedly.

"My children," The man spoke in a clear strong voice. The room slowly quieted with the exception of a few murmuring infants.

"The time has come for me to leave you…" A stern but understanding glare from the auburn-haired woman at his side silenced the uproar before it began.

"There is much that I have to tell you, but know that after I am gone Lily Luna and her siblings shall guide you, my beloved children, until we meet again."

"Now listen and heed my words…Protect the children, they are our future, Support your family, the people who believe in you are our pillar, and Love, Live, Honor, courageously, honestly, without regret and that shall be our strength!"

The meeting and following dinner continued for hours and later, exhausted from comforting an extended family that numbered in the hundreds, Harry James Potter meditated as he reclined in an armchair situated in the corner of the complex's family room.

Snoozing lightly in the chairs across from him were one of his great-grandsons and the boy's wife.

The couple was expecting their first child and had elected to seek his advice. In reality the elder man knew from the furtive looks that he had been receiving after dinner that many of his children had opted to stand vigil and watch over him through the night.

The youngest of his descendants had been carried off to bed and Lily and her sisters had gone off to attend meetings with the other planetary leaders.

A few of his great-great-grandchildren made excuses to join him mentally from time to time to reassure themselves with his continued presence and he had borne their hesitant mental probes with a soothing fondness.

He had known that things would be difficult, for without trying he had become a fixture in the lives of the people of this world as timeless and renowned as Merlin had been to the wizards of Earth.

As one of the most powerful Meta-psychics in Terran Federation Space, the leader of an entire world of meta-psychics and nominal leader and human spokesman for several more he had spent centuries alternately trying to get out of the lime-light and then waiting for people to lose interest.

In that respect his efforts to avoid fame were some of Harry's few great failures.

He'd figured that he'd had time on his side after all. As a meta-psychic, or wizard as they were called in some parts of the galaxy lived on average at least twice as long as their non-magical brethren.

The unique qualities of Harry's physiology meant that he was fated to live even longer than other wizards barring injury, illness and premature death.

It had been in the middle of the twenty-first century that medical technology such as nanobiotics, micromechanical-treatments, dextratritonin and Asgard gene therapy became available to the citizens of Earth and merely fifty years later that the magical equivalents became commonly accepted in part due to the desire to not be seen as inferior to muggles.

During the tumultuous years that lead to the founding of the Terran Federation and for a time after, the races that had come to compose the Federation struggled against external and internal threats.

As a result this had encouraged advances in in-utero, and post-natal genetic manipulation, cybernetics, organic technology, meta-physics theory and other methods of enhancing and improving the human condition; and forced them to begin moving out of the isolated communities that spawned them and into the mainstream of society.

There were of course several groups that resisted these changes and for the most part they were left alone and allowed to develop in peace.

There were several incidences of violence over the years from various extremist groups who believed that Humanity was dooming it self to oblivion and wished to show their brothers and sisters the error of their ways.

For the most part however, those opposing the use of such technology held several valid medical and moral points and were satisfied to peacefully express their own opinions.

The degree of enhancements differed between military and civilian lives. Studies were carried out to determine the effects of genetic manipulation on the human population of the Terran Federation and over time. Genetic samples and material from previous generations were carefully preserved and stored on various worlds for study and safety.

It went without saying that the ultimate fate of the Asgard and the cause of their downfall was not forgotten.

Lobbyists for genetic research were however adamant in differentiating between the mass genetic enhancements and cloning of the Asgard and the life saving medical techniques offered by such technology to the degenerative genetic syndromes that afflicted billions throughout space.

Genetic manipulation for anything less than terminal medical conditions was tightly controlled in the public domain, though a black market thrived in certain systems.

On average a 'baseline' human lived for approximately two hundred years and two hundred and fifty years with access to life-prolonging medical treatment.

Meta-human lived for close to four hundred years with access to the same or equivalent magical medicine. Those who could afford high-end treatments or were lucky in the genetic lottery could live as long as four hundred and sixty years.

Harry had been around for five hundred and thirty-seven years without the benefit of most if not all of the medical treatments that were available.

He suspected that he would have been able to outlive the Flamel's record or perhaps even the legendary record set by the wizard Methusaleh if he had accepted such treatments.

Harry enjoyed his mortality though and never sought live beyond his natural lifespan. The experiences that he had shared with his wives ensured that they would at least never truly leave him alone as he lived through the ages but of his children only Lily Luna and two of her youngest siblings still survived.

As a result the tests of time had made Harry and his family one of the most powerful and famous clans of Meta-psychics.

Now that he sat alone by his request, he mentally watched over the bustling activities of the palatial compound as his daughter efficiently drove all thoughts of despondency from the minds of the inhabitants within.

Carefully Harry searched until he found the one he was looking for, a forlorn child of eleven, with unruly, dark hair and vibrant green eyes.

The boy had been set the task of scrubbing the cookware as a character-building exercise after a minor infraction. Sending a silent query to the house-mind he determined that the child was almost finished with his task and was looking forward to playing with his cousins.

With a carefully hidden push and a gentle wisp of power Harry cleaned and stacked the remaining pans and sent the boy on his merry way shyly thanking him.

With a low chuckle Harry Potter closed his eyes… and died.

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**Somewhere in Southwestern England a few miles from the northern Bristol Channel.**

Howell Pembroke was a simple man and one should not assume by term 'simple' that he was dimwitted but that he was one of the few individuals gifted with something that was something of a misnomer, commonsense. Howell worked on one of the nearby small dairy farms and spent his day doing hard, honest work.

Of course to Mr. Pembroke there was no other preferable type of work other than the honest variety. Anything else was liable to be more trouble than it was worth in his opinion

Of course that scally Fredrick from over in Exmoor seemed to think differently with his fancy ways and strange music, always looking for the easy way out.

It irritated Mr. Pembroke to no end whenever the young man came over to help at his uncle's farm. Youngsters had no respect for the peace of a small town, harping on about strange things to the lasses like elves and alien abductions.

Things like the strange lights that had been reported being seen in the sky at the end of June last year over at some castle ruins in the Scottish Highlands.

That mess quieted down quickly enough but now the villagers were making a fuss over a much more important problem, someone was stealing cows.

In Pembroke's opinion all this talk of alien abductions was nothing more than some ploy on behalf of an enterprising bloke of the criminal sort.

Cows were hardly the easiest animals to steal and sell unnoticed, so having people looking to the sky instead of to the earth and their pockets was simply commonsense to an enterprising thief, and Howell was not fooled, no not at all.

It was the night of All Hallows Eve and the air was chilly on the lonely track that Mr. Pembroke was using to get to his house. Howell stifled a shiver as he lifted the collar of his overcoat to cover his ears.

Suddenly, there came a faint musical tone and in a flash of light, not five feet before him stood Widow Bates' Holstein, clean and chipper.

The cow's soft brown eyes seemed to watch the stunned man before uttering a disgruntled, if somewhat resigned, lowing moo. Then, without further ado, the animal made its way over to the Bates' farm on the side of the road at a steady trot and then began to eat ravenously.

Howell Pembroke stood frozen stiff trying to still a case of the screaming adabs. When his mind had sufficiently recovered he slowly looked off to his side at the cow. The animal was looking back munching on grass and as it did so its eyes seemed to say.

"_Sooo, how was your night? I'm not doing too badly; my fanny hurts something fierce though…but, other than that I'm quite alright, oh, and they're waiting for you."_

Pembroke struggled to find an explanation as he searched for anything in his forty-five years of existence that could possibly explain what he had just seen.

All the while in the back of his mind he could still hear that wanker Frederick repeating over again and over again. "Alien Abduction! Alien Abduction! Alien Abduction!"

For a horrified second Howell Pembroke did something completely out of character and took leave of his senses. With a jerky, strangled gasp he looked at the heavens and actually expected to be abducted by _aliens_.

He shivered at the thought of such an impolite way to be invited to tea while having his anus probed.

Then, he caught himself and rubbed a rough hand over his face. Breathing deeply he exhaled into his hand and sniffed, it seemed that he was completely sober.

Satisfied at having found the cause of his problems, he quickly turned around and briskly marched back to the village pub.

Man cannot live on bread and water alone after all, to rectify the condition of extreme sobriety that had caused him to hallucinate Howell Pembroke intended to get smashed.

Fortunately his distraction and subsequent actions caused him to miss the bright green grinning skull that popped up behind him in the direction of the distant town of Godric's Hollow.

His lack of sobriety also ensured that he would be too drunk to notice the curious fireworks, or find anything odd about the group of old men and women dressed in night-gowns and star-spangled dresses, the men wore the dresses, who thought it only right that muggles should celebrate too.

After a night that Howell would later compare to tales of Rip Van Winkle, involving ninepin bowling with dwarves he awoke to find that he had somehow been deposited in the morning on the Isle of Man.

After that he was sober till the day he died.

Moo!

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**1100 CE A Castle on a hill somewhere in the Scottish Highlands.**

A man and a woman stood near a lake looking up at the castle. The man was tall and slightly stooped wearing a tall conical hat on a head of wild grey hair.

The woman was a stunning example of feminine beauty with long dark hair and deep blue eyes so dark they seemed to almost have a tinge of violet. She watched the man beside her with a touch of the exasperation and adoration that one would give to slightly goofy grandparent.

"Mei patronus." She said, "I am beginning to understand why you didn't want your name involved in this endeavor."

"Now earwig." The older man addressed the woman jovially, "Why would you say that?" He responded as he cocked his head to one side as he seemed to be listening to something that the woman couldn't hear.

"Why…Hogwarts" The woman asked in distaste.

The older man didn't answer at first choosing to merely grin in a smug manner and ask her another question instead as was his way.

"Did Godric like his new hat?"

"Yes," She replied, "Especially after the old one was destroyed when he tried to molest that poor beast, honestly; it was just a saying."

"Never tickle a sleeping dragon." The old man hummed and the grounds seemed to fill with a feeling of mirth.

"What was that last spell that you cast Myrddin?" Rowena asked quietly.

"Flying Pigs!" Myrddin laughed.

"What?" Ravenclaw sputtered.

"Your slithering friend Slytherin," Myrddin said with thinly veiled distaste, "Said that this school was as likely to be created as pigs learning to fly."

Green eyes twinkled with mirth, "Since you've all agreed that it's my right to name the place, I took the chance to rub it in, if you haven't seen the school crest then you should."

"A winged boar I know." Rowena shook her head in a mixture of prim disapproval and amusement.

"You didn't answer my question. What does that spell do?"

"Didn't I?" Myrddin smirked, "I thought I did?" He grinned at her serious expression as if amused by a joke that she could not understand, "Just something for the future my dear. I made a place that every castle needs."

Suddenly the man turned on his heel and quickly shuffled away, then skipped then hopped.

"I have to get back now." Looking over his shoulder at the raven-haired witch behind him, he winked. "Can't let myself be caught up bumbling in two places at the same time after all, now can I?"

Then with a twirl and a wriggle and a rather suggestive shaking of his fanny that in nine hundred years would be recognized as an acceptable Macarena, the man who had helped to enchant Hogwarts Castle, Moros Myr also known as Myrddin Emrys vanished with a faint pop and a slight sound akin to a fart.

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**Nightfall October 31****st**** 1981 Godric's Hollow 11:30 pm**

Honestly; it was all just a big misunderstanding.

While their methods could be called a little extreme, the ultimate goal of their little unisex club was a noble one.

Said goal was the preservation of wizard society in a world of uncouth muggles and the rightful securing of a position of ascendancy for Wizards.

Gellert Grindlewald had the right idea, many in the circle thought the Statute of Secrecy was little by little strangling the magical world as muggle teknography advanced.

So for the greater good, decent upstanding wizards needed to step forward and put an end to the dilution of their heritage.

They needed to say that enough was enough and step out into the light and share their wisdom with the destructive, capricious muggles to create a safer, better, more enlightened world under the guidance of their betters, Wizards.

To the most fervent of believers, nothing was to high a price to pay for the salvation of the world, not even genocide...

The leader of this merry band, one Tom Marvolo Riddle, more commonly known as The Dark Lord Voldemort, felt that there could be no greater truth than the fact that wizards belonged in a place of power and he intended to be the one that insured that they succeeded in attaining such a position.

As a child, Tom had known first hand the cruelty of muggles and understood that the only way to deal with a bully was to be a bigger, meaner bully, power meant everything to people, what you wanted you took by right of might and Mr. Riddle wanted to change the world.

Over time Young Tom had succeeded in not only attaining a position of dominance among the children of the orphanage in which he lived and among several of the children even older than he was, but had also intimidated the adults that worked at his home.

The key to his success was the very thing that proved that young Tom was not some ordinary unwanted little brat, the very thing that an infant Tom learned to use in all the wrong ways in his most impressionable years, Power.

The power that he commanded proved that he was special that he was wanted and he would often dream of one day being discovered by his parents who were glorious and powerful and so very impressed with his skill that they would embrace him, explaining that they had been separated from him in some mad struggle and had thought him dead.

The power made him strong and most importantly it made him unique.

Unfortunately for Tom this uniqueness fostered an aura of quiet horror and fear that quite thoroughly ensured that he was never adopted even more efficiently than his burgeoning sociopathic tendencies would have otherwise.

The power was a uniqueness that filled him with pride; however, even as it isolated him and numbed his developing sense of ethics and humanity.

Young Tom never learned to care for anyone but himself, nor did he ever learn of love or forgiveness, or mercy, the more the pity for the world.

He learned of power, of causing pain and manipulating fear and he grew up on a steady diet of malice and hatred and the world would be a poorer place for it.

Then there came Albus Dumbledore, Deputy Headmaster, Transfiguration Professor and the man who would both confirm and deny Tom's hopes.

Tom learned that he was unique and that the name of his power was Magic.

He felt pride in fact that the man had never witnessed someone with such prodigious wandless control of his magic.

In his euphoria Tom made a tiny error. He was not as careful as he usually would have been around adults and in an unguarded moment had said things, alluded to things that he should not have.

If it were anyone else it wouldn't have mattered but on that day it was Albus Dumbledore speaking with him and watching him as carefully as he had watched him for every day since then.

He had over time discovered more about the uniqueness of his heritage and those qualities eventually led to the revelations of his birth, the ignominy of his mother's death and the unendurable knowledge that his Father still lived.

He had remedied that fact in his sixth year and had taken one of the many steps that led to where he was today; fearfully close to conquering Magical Britain but for one small detail.

A prophecy.

A prophecy that now placed him before a small metal gate at the beginning and end of a quaint garden path.

A quaint garden path leading to and from a rather cozy little summer cottage owned by the Potters.

With a series of light mutters, a swish, flick, twirl and jab there was a faint sound akin to tinkling glass that was surely louder inside the failing ward than out as the last of the house's protections fell.

The anti apparition and anti-portkey wards were already in place, his agents at the Ministry of Magic having confirmed that the floo was disconnected and ready to obfuscate, and delay any ministry response; all that was left for him to do was knock on the door.

The Door Knocker tried to bash his skull in.

There was barely a blink, just a single thought. _"Confrigo!"_

The brass fist and door were reduced to merely splinters and twisted metal sparking against his shield.

_"Carpe Expulsum"_ And with a slight pressure against his body the splinters shot off into the darkened room.

_"Larcarnum Inflamarae!"_ Vermillion gouts of flame ignited the wooden splinters as they roiled inside the house spreading the burning high speed projectiles throughout the interior, creating tiny pinpricks of light that were swallowed by the darkness.

Three spells cast in lest than a second and nearly simultaneously. Not too shabby, he hadn't even broken his stride, the morsmordre that followed was almost an afterthought. Then the wolf came.

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**Nightfall October 31****st**** 1981 Godric's Hollow 11:30 pm**

James Potter was content with the world.

Sure he'd learnt a year ago that a psychopathic murderer most likely wanted to kill him, his wife, and their one year old son.

Sure he and his wife were confined to their home under a Fidelius Charm with outside contact provided only by their former Secret-Keeper, a man he loved as a brother who even now was being hunted by the psychopathic servants of the previously mentioned psychopathic murderer.

Finally, yes, he did have a case of cabin fever that left him climbing the walls…

His wife was in the kitchen brewing tea, their child was playing on the floor of the living-room under his father's watchful gaze and they were safe from harm.

James Potter was content with the world.

Suddenly, an uneasy feeling crawled down the flesh of his spine, causing him to grow tense.

When the feeling of dread did not abate he peeked out a corner of the window.

Even before the wards fell completely he was shouting to his wife. "Lily, take Harry and go! It's him. Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

Then he fell to business as his wife thundered up the stairs.

He turned to the ceramic wolf umbrella stand that he had mentally named Mini-Moony.

He jabbed his wand and silently incanted _"Lupifors."_

To the door he turned and cast a version of a rather vicious curse that he had talked Sirius out of ever trying on Snape to appease Lily, Voldemort was fair game. _"Anima Inimicum" _and then "Colloportus." Followed by a hastily cast "Protego Totalum!"

Hurrying toward the living room he focused, ignoring the sound of shattered glass as he tried to encompass in his gaze the sofa, armchair and the hat stand next to the wary animated wolf. _"Anima!"_

Then _"Apis Conjurus!"_ A wave in the direction of the kitchen summoned plates and silverware into the room to join the swarm of conjured bees circling the ceiling with "Accio Kitchenware"

Then he turned to the mantle while the couch shuffled in front of him protectively.

_"Transmorgify."_ Gave the items from the kitchen and the anumated furniture wickedly sharpened edges and wings.

_"Avifors"_ animated the crystal owl as he made the lot unbreakable.

Half a second before the door exploded he cast a final spell, _"Fuscus Obscuro!"_

Then he crouched down and fished a single crimson feather from his pocket while hoping for a miracle.

The fire was intended to illuminate the magically darkened room and deter attacks but the nature of the spell ensured that the darkness would be impenetrable for a more than a few minutes.

He hoped that it would be enough as he could still hear Lily moving about upstairs.

The bee swarm had been almost completely wiped out by the flame and the sofa was impaled by burning splinters. James knew that the burning splinters would set fire to the carpet.

He focused on the outline that could be easily seen in the doorway of the darkened room as he had intended and silently incanted "Oppugno" as he focused on the dark, shadowy form with glowing red eyes.

A subtle whisper echoed in Jame's mind as his occlumency resisted the Dark Lord's unfocused legilimency. The skittering sensation returned and began to focus on him but then the crouching wolf struck.

The wolf leapt from the darkness reaching fearlessly with slavering jaws for the throat of his master's enemy.

The creature was neatly beheaded and then reanimated by a foul black spell.

The neck of the wolf sprouted a new set of massive jaws and tried to head for James even as the armchair bearing a pair of transfigured antlers charged forward.

The undead wolf pounced upon the armchair only to be impaled by the now bladed prongs of that James had given the animated hat-stand. The beast writhed jerkily on the pole.

James hastily cast a replication charm on the remaining bees as they made it to the doorway and attacked Voldemort. Then in the midst of the distraction summoned his power and roared "Larcarnum Inflamarae!" at the wolf-thing, then silently cast _"Percutio!!"_ at Voldemort, changing his position with the sofa every time.

The Severing Curse and a Dark flame spell destroyed the exponentially proliferating bees and reduced the armchair to a charred husk that feebly struggled to continue its charge.

Voldemort lazily blocked the piercing hex and he quickly sent a Dark slashing curse slightly below the point of origin and was rewarded with a cry of pain.

Triumphantly he spoke, "Potter, I've come to show you, the **price** of defiance! Surrender and the Dark Lord Voldemort may make your death… painless, Avada Kedavra!"

He cast the ancient Aramaic curse in the direction of the cry and heard something shatter as he moved quickly away from the doorway to avoid presenting a target while he tried to defeat the magical darkness curse.

He silently projected his voice to another part of the room while he cast a Point Me spell. His echoing voice intoned from the opposite corner, "Is…that…it?" His ploy was rewarded by a crashing noise as he cast another Killing curse in the direction that the wand had pointed. "Avada Kedavra!"

James had fallen to the ground in agony when Voldemort had easily deflected his blasting hex and clipped his leg with a slashing curse shattering the shield raised in defense.

It would have disemboweled him if he hadn't already been moving out of the way trying to change positions.

The Killing Curse that followed had missed him completely but smashed the small crystal owl that had hovered around him protectively. James inwardly cursed Peter.

He banished the a display cabinet in the direction of the Dark Tosser's voice and immediately realized his error as he saw Voldemort's form around the edge of the sofa coming from another direction casting the killing curse in a bolt of green lighting.

He didn't have time to get out of the way and the only thing that saved him was summoning over Lily's antique tea table that he had always hated, into the path of the spell.

Struggling not to groan he transfigured the four legs of the armchair's foot-stool into segmented appendages with claw-like fingers and pincers, then he sent the thing scuttling away to ambush Voldemort.

The Darkness spell ended.

"Crucio"

With a triumphant shout Voldemort held James potter under the influence of the cruciatus curse until the man collapsed, spasming so violently that he snapped his own wand.

"You…will bow… to…me!!"

Lord Voldemort grinned and cast a dark curse that caused James to vomit black blood while breathing in tortured gasps, he laughed, up until the moment that a steak knife planted itself between his shoulder blades.

"Aaarrrgh!"

With a strangled cry the Dark Lord struggled to remove the wriggling blade that was just out of his reach.

At the same time Voldemort either banished or destroyed the rest of the vicious utensils before they found an opening to bury themselves in his body.

He sent a sickly yellow spell at a hovering butcher knife causing the blade to collapse into rusty particles. Not even the toothpicks were spared for one came very close to taking out an eye.

The Dark Lord was so distracted that he was almost brought to his knees by the rabid assassin bug-foot stool when it dropped from the ceiling.

Had James still had his wand or even a good leg to stand on he might have been able to mount a counter attack or perhaps try to make it out the door.

Both efforts would have been ultimately futile but he didn't have a working wand and he would never run from this house while there was a chance that Lily hadn't escaped yet.

So what James Potter did was simple.

First he forced himself to regain control of his trembling limbs and ignored the wetness at the crotch of his pants.

Then he forced himself upright, and after a moment swayed to his feet.

Exhausted physically and magically he nearly blacked out then and there; an act that may have saved his life ironically. The Dark Lord had lost all interest in toying with the elder Potter and was more than a little eager to kill the little Potter brat and go home and curl up in bed with a good book.

The thought of James waking up to find his son dead and the anguish of failure would have been worth sparing his life in Voldemort's mind.

History books would speculate on the events of the duel between Voldemort and James Potter but in the end only two people would ever have first hand knowledge off just what happened and only one would know what went through James Potter's mind before the end.

"_You…will bow…to…me!!"_

"_Of all the arrogant clichéd things that Moldywart could say!!"_

"_Wait…Moldy…wart…__**GOLD**__!!" _

The assassin bug-foot stool skittered its last as it rested in a charred black pile.

Voldemort had actually subconsciously deemed finishing off James Potter as inconsequential and forgotten about the man.

He had taken the first few steps toward the staircase when he heard the one sound that he hated more than phoenix song and the bubbling noise that cooking cabbage soup made, Laughter.

To be precise, it was the laughter of the mocking variety, full-bodied, belly-busting, rolling peals of laughter that spouted from the older Potter in an uncontrollable surge.

Slowly, with very frightening deliberation the Dark Lord turned around to face the source of mirth.

What he saw staggered him.

Those eyes, those unbowed, disdainful, proud eyes of an old turk, a warrior who did not fear his end as Voldemort did.

In the shadow and smoke of the burning living room James Potter's features went unnoticed, all that the thing that was once Tom Marvolo Riddle saw was the eyes that weighed him, judged him and found him wanting.

Magic is a wondrous thing, in and of itself it has no form or function, it simply is.

Fill a glass with water and the water will conform to the inside of the glass.

That same glass of water could become lost in the oceans or be the seed of a monsoon, or the dew on a blade of grass. So too did magic pervade all life, even muggle life in ways mysterious and terrible; blatant and amazing.

Riddle had pursued power and immortality through his magic.

He had spurned as inconsequential the subtle arts of the heart in favor of learning to manipulate the mind, ignored the lessons of children's morality tales whilst seeking every last whispered breath of arcane dark knowledge regarding horcruxes.

As a result Lord Voldemort was paying the price for his reckless incaution.

A tattered soul and slow and creeping… Madness.

In the shadows of the burning house Tom Riddle saw the spectre of his dead father, the often imagined sneer of his maternal grandfather and the courage of a man unafraid of his end.

He freaked.

"Avada Kedavra!!"

He shrieked.

And he slipped further still into ruination.

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**1975 Hogwarts Room of Requirements**

Lily Potter was a rather vivacious, hot-tempered yet fair-minded fifteen year-old girl.

She was also tired, frustrated and annoyed even after relieving some of her stress by using her fifth year charms work knowledge to hex James Potter to a wall and make sure that he stayed there.

There were rumors of increasing dark wizard activity as well as disturbing acts of violence toward muggles. Sevy was in a club with those Dark Arts kids, while Potter and Black were taking berkishness to new and unexplored levels.

To make matters worse, Disco was alive.

Right at that moment she didn't want to go to the Gryffindor common room and let Remus and Peter talk her into letting Potter down.

She also wanted to avoid Severus and his ever present gang of Slytherins. She wanted a peaceful place where she could do her homework and feel all her worries drain away.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a door that she had never noticed before.

It was opposite the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy attempting to train trolls for the ballet. Stopping her restless pacing, she walked over to the door and with great curiosity opened it slowly.

She looked into a well lit study room with overstuffed cushions similar to her favorite ones at home strewn across the floor and on comfortable looking chairs. The walls were lined with small bookcases filled with books on charms.

With an amazed smile she stepped through.

Lily entered into a room with no doors or windows, filled with a warm light that felt loving and familiar. Strange soothing voices spoke without words but in a language similar to Latin.

Strange new ideas caressed her thoughts, soothed her mind but left it her own. For an instant Lily Evans' world expanded beyond Hogwarts, beyond James and Severus, beyond Disco, beyond the world, the galaxy and further still.

Strange, profound secrets were whispered into her ears, the future of mankind, possible futures and an offered a choice that only she could make.

Without hesitation she made a decision that she did not remember when she sat on a stack of overstuffed cushions and started her homework.

Lily would return to that room twice more as a student and then once again years later before she was consciously aware that she was pregnant. The world had changed… it just didn't know it yet.

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**Hogwarts 1980**

It was with a feeling of horror that the two couples, Frank and Alice, along with James and Lily listened to the prophecy.

Snape had seemed strangely ill when he learned that she was pregnant during one of their now rare conversations.

His words of congratulation sounded more like the gasps of a dying man. Lily cried for the boy that she once knew for whatever he was doing was surely killing him.

They had entered a memory in Dumbledore's pensieve and looked on in bemusement, then in increasing alarm as the scene progressed.

A strange woman bedecked in layers of shawls, bangles, beads and sequins; wearing a headband and a pair of huge spectacles was being interviewed by Professor Dumbledore for the position of Professor of Divinations. They watched as she dithered nervously, trying to appear worldly and mysterious under Dumbledore's increasingly nonplussed gaze.

James began to chuckle only to be jabbed in the side by Lily and then things got strange.

At first Lily thought that Sybill as Dumbledore had called her was beginning to swoon under the pressure and heat of her many garments but then her head snapped up, eyes blank and milky white.

Sybill began to speak in a hollow raspy voice to the interest and alarm of the memory Dumbledore and the assembled audience.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies..."

A minor commotion sounded beyond the door startling Frank and James but their interest was soon snagged by the words of the prospective Divination professor.

"…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."

They listened to Sybill repeat the words a second time before the memory ended. There was denial, anger, fear and then resignation.

Lily felt sick with the worry that made Alice's face wan and stripped the strength and confidence from James and Frank. She looked Dumbledore in the eye and saw sadness, guilt and hope.

She spoke before she knew what she was doing. "We must protect our children, if He knows even a little of this prophecy he will come."

Frank and James started at the firm tone of her voice, Alice stared at her.

Looking at Dumbledore she continued her train of thought. "Until he loses interest, is brought to justice or we find a way to better protect our children." She placed a hand over her womb. "The children must not come to harm."

"Of course!" Frank exclaimed and Alice nodded with fierce resolution.

James gripped her shoulder tightly his eyes were grim and determined, the only time in his life that he refrained from making a Serious-Sirius joke. "I will protect my son! Siriusly!"

Lily slugged him.

Frank and Alice groaned but the tension dissipated as James had intended.

None of them spoke of the danger they were facing, all there was, was laughter.

Albus looked like he wanted to cry as he watched them.

They went into hiding the very next night. Albus Dumbledore was the only one to know both locations, something that was more assumed than known as each party was ignorant of the specific arrangements of the other.

Albus was the Secret Keeper for Alice and Frank at Lily's insistence and Sirius was theirs at James.

From then on they lived in nervous anticipation. Sirius lived the life of a hunted man. Bellatrix had some how gotten wind of the fact that Sirius was the Potter's Secret Keeper in spite of the decoys drawn from the members of the Order of the Phoenix.

He had nearly been captured. Hephaestus Jones had died so that Sirius could go free they never found the old auror's body.

Suspicion had been abound in the Order meetings since then, Lily and Alice rarely risked attending those anymore, they didn't want to remove their children from under the safety of their protections nor did they wish to leave them alone.

Things were looking grim and the suspicions were getting uglier.

Either there was a spy in the Order or choosing Sirius was simply too obvious in spite of the genius of picking an obvious Secret Keeper. Sirius never said it but he and Moody suspected Remus Lupin.

The werewolf grew more and more withdrawn as the death toll and the weight of suspicion grew but James refused to believe such of his friend.

He and Sirius argued for a night and a day. James felt that they needed someone trustworthy but publicly unrelated to the Potters. They may have chanced using an order member recommended by Dumbledore, perhaps someone willing to give an Unbreakable Oath or someone they were believed to mistrust like Moony.

Sirius however, favored misdirection and fear betrayal. He argued in favor of using Peter as the new Secret Keeper.

James had been reluctant but saw the logic in Sirius' argument. Peter bless his soul, was a good man and a great friend but a person who was often overlooked even within the Order.

Giving him that responsibility was crazy in Lily's opinion when she found out what they had done. A crazy decision but an unexpected one, with none beyond the four knowing what they had done Sirius became a decoy for Peter who had been one of the original decoy Secret Keepers when they first went into hiding..

Now as Lily raced up the stairs she felt sick at the thought that Voldenort had found them not more than a day after they had switched Secret Keepers.

Ice flowed through her veins as the wards fell. She felt such a powerful sense of foreboding that she spared a glance back through the upstairs corridor that led to the staircase.

Lily cursed herself for forgetting her wand in the bedroom, for allowing herself to be separated from the wand in the hectic hustle of caring for a toddler and running a household.

She had left her wand in their bedroom in hopes of keeping the thing out of Harry's reach.

She secretly thought that it was funny when her child had turned Sirius' face neon yellow but she didn't want the same happening to her. Harry was being oddly quiet, having recognized his mother's silent desperation and was frightened by it.

The one year old tightly clutched the front of her blouse and green eyes watched the older woman's face intently as she searched the nightstand.

The wand wasn't there!

Lily would have screamed with frustration if not for the fact that she didn't want to startle Harry.

She then set him down on the bed while she dropped to her hands and knees to search for her willow wand. Her son fussed lightly when she left his field of vision to snatch the magical tool up from where it had fallen beneath the bed.

She quickly calmed the murmuring child before he could do more than squeal with a slight cheering charm. By the time she made it to the door darkness was pouring out of the staircase leading downstairs.

The Obscuration spell was the combined work of Lily and James and while unfinished, it was able to fill an area about the caster with magically impenetrable darkness that lasted for nearly twenty minutes.

The spell only afflicted people other than the original caster, and caused all who entered the inky darkness to be afflicted with mild confusion. As Lily edged further down the corridor with her son and away from the darkness she heard the door explode.

"_James…" _

For the second time since she had grasped her son Lily tried to disapparate out of the building, but the anti-apparition wards held her in place. Desperately she locked the door to the nursery both physically and magically and raised the strongest Light protection charms around the room that she could muster.

"Let no evil enter here, let the gaze of malice and ill-intention pass us by, shield us from the senses and from harm, grant protection for those within."

As she cast a vast series of protection charms around the room and on her son, sparing nothing for herself, she muttered an old mnemonic that she had created to remind herself of the proper order in which to cast the magic.

The endeavor allowed her to forget the malice she had felt when she touched the Dark Lord's wards and ignore the sight through the frosted window where she could see the fluttering cloaks of a horde of Dementors as they circled the property.

Even on her own Lily doubted that she would be able to survive beyond the boundary of the anti-apparition wards long enough to get to safety, let alone burdened with protecting her son.

For a moment Lily's heart lifted as she faintly heard the sound of James triumphant laughter. A smile graced her features and Harry perked up at the noise.

"Avada Kedavra!!" A harsh voice shrieked.

The thump of a falling body echoed in the silent house.

"_James…"_

"_Curse you, curse you, you murderous bastard!!" _

For a few frenzied seconds Lily struggled to remember everything that she had learned about deconstructing wards, but her efforts merely revealed what she had already known. It was an exercise in futility.

"_For Dumbledore to have not arrived by now, Voldemort must have created a distraction somewhere."_

There comes a time in every person's life, between childhood and old age when they are confronted with their mortality.

Children may wish to grow older, faster while the old may wish for their youth. Eventually however, all thinking beings come to realize the simple truth that eventually, all things die; and how people deal with that fact is telling about their nature.

James Potter died laughing defiantly at his killer, perhaps in the end, glimpsing the true nature of the cowardly murderer.

Lily Potter stared into the curious eyes of her son, her eyes, set in the face of a child one year and three month's old.

She stilled her struggles and smiled at the uncertain face of the boy watching her and he calmed.

Lily moved, as if in a trance, she approached her son feeling a swelling of pride in her chest as she took in his features for what might be the final time. Strangely, Lily felt almost disconnected from her body, she briefly wondered if she was under the imperius but dismissed the idea.

The titian-haired woman bent over the infant in his cradle, her auburn locks seeming to shine in light of the moon, the darkness shrouding her face was banished by the glow of green eyes.

Harry's eyes were hypnotically locked on his mother's and did not focus upon the gaunt shadow the stood in the doorway, leering at the scene with eerie red eyes.

His ears heard not the sibilant command, the horrible offer that was made to the women, to save herself if she would but step aside. All Harry heard was a whisper in his mind, words he would not understand until much later.

"_Our existence in this universe is impermanent, all things must one day cease to exist and die. However, even death and non-existence is impermanent and subject to change, we must not fear change. A leaf grows on a tree, it falls off and dies, and a new leaf sprouts." _

Then Lily whispered a single word, a trigger that would change Harry's future forever.

"Resurrection."

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The dark figure glided down the corridor. Sibilant whispers caused the heat and smoke to clear away from him. He stepped through the burning corridor a vision of a cloaked demon from hell.

"Li-ly." He playfully cooed.

"Oh, Lii-lee!" a door slammed open revealing an empty bedroom.

"Come out mudblood!" His voice growled a command as a upstairs shower was revealed, leaving only the door at the end of the corridor.

"Come out to play." With a satisfied smirk he gazed at the hastily cast protections. Aurors no longer dared to approach the Dark Mark, waiting until hours after a sighting claiming that they needed to gather a sizeable force, while they reconnoitered the situation.

Reconnoitered being the fancy word for ensuring that _**He**_ wasn't there. His new allies would take care of the brave few, but it would be an hour until anyone significant arrived if all went according to plan.

"_More than enough time to kill a mongrel."_

Voldemort's opinion of young Harry was not dismissive, for he knew better than anyone just how dangerous a mongrel could be.

"_I will not fall to another like me, to a mere Lord-to-be!"_

A pity really, the boy must have great potential, but it was best that he kill him now and save himself future difficulties.

The Last of the protections denying him entry fell, and the door silently opened.

Even from behind he understood the reason behind Severus' plea. The woman was stuuning, for a mudblood, the moonlight gave her an ethereal quality that caused her to seem like she was glowing with a silvery-white light. For a moment the Dark Lord was moved by the lust to defile the vision of beauty before him.

"Get out of the way woman, I come only for the boy, give him to me and I will let you live." He whispered seductively and left out what kind of life she would be having if she did as he asked.

"_Severus will just have to settle for sloppy seconds."_

For a moment as she straightened and began to turn around Voldemort fancied that she would accept. The moment he saw her eyes, hard and determined, he knew that she would not.

"He's just a child, please spare him!"

Lily pleaded not only for her child, but for the remnants of Voldemort's soul.

"Get out of the way woman!" The dark wired snarled.

"Please! No!" She screamed.

"_Severus will have to find another slut to share his bed with."_

"Avada Kedavra!" The Dark Lord intoned, and the grey and lifeless body of a red-haired woman fell to the nursery floor.

The Dark Lord Voldemort gazed upon the form of the young child prophesied to be his rival.

He raised his pale yew and phoenix feather wand briefly then stopped. The air was filled with a sense of oppressive unease. He raised his wand again and looked at the child lying in the crib. For a lingering second the Dark Lord paused.

"Avada Kedavra."

Had he been paying attention Voldemort would have seen the dementors scatter in fear as a white ethereal light that seemed to come from no visible source banished them.

He may not have known what was happening but as self-absorbed as he was his highly developed sense of self-preservation picked up on the air of anticipation and very nearly overrode the wizard's ego.

It wasn't enough though as the bolt of green lightening stretched from the pale yew wand to the forehead of the infant in the crib and in that instant Harry Potter was both alive and dead.

"_Resurrection."_

In the Ministry of Magic there was a department tasked with studying items, events and areas of interest to the magical world.

A group of wizards and witches that studied and experimented with things as mundane as ten thousand year old paperweights, to things so unspeakable that they were…unspeakable.

The Department of Mysteries had many subdivisions that worked on a staggering array of projects that sere so spiffy and in a few cases downright scary, that none were allowed to speak of them. One subdivision was devoted to studying the power of love.

It is tempting, even in the magical to dismiss such a basic thing as human emotion as being inconsequential to magical study at best, dreadfully pointless and unworthy of further work at worst.

After all everyone knew about emotions, what it was to hate, fear and love. The Ministry used fear inducing monsters to help incapacitate convicts, Dark wizards drove their spells with loathing, and Love was mostly overlooked by all but the wise.

Yet it was Love that sparked wars and destroyed kingdoms.

It was love that built empires and inspired the souls of poets, bards, artists, warriors, peasants, kings, young and old since the first human man and woman looked upon their offspring and decided to protect it.

Love was one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Love was more than powerful enough to spin the stars out of the heavens, to halt the rotation of the earth.

Love was more powerful than space.

Love was more powerful than time.

And, just this once, more powerful than death.

For a moment baby Harry saw Mum and Da standing over him watching proudly. He was cheered to see them so well that he wanted to go to them. He knew that if he did so that they would welcome him wit open arms, yet something held him back.

"_Resurrection."_

There was something Mommy wanted him to do. There was an errand that he had to run, but not to worry, he wouldn't be alone, and there was nothing to stop him from asking questions and being given, helpful suggestions, within reason of course.

"_Resurrection." _

Coming back to his body was a shock, a jagged bleeding wound was upon his brow and the pain caused him to cry.

Bad things, always happened when Harry cried.

The Dark Lord had no time to understand what had happened, he cast the killing curse, there was a bright flash of light and his world exploded in pain. The remains of his body would be consumed by fire while his spirit fled from the scene, howling in fright.

The protections that Lily had cast preserved the crib from harm, but as a sobbing Hagrid would later attest, there was no sign of the babe to be found.

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**High Earth Orbit**

The Asgard were a dying race.

Once, long ago their people had been similar to humans in their form and healthy.

Now they had lost the ability to procreate through some unforeseen consequence of their genetic manipulations. The had survived for thousands of years by creating copies of their consciousness and downloading into a new cloned body when the old one failed.

But there was a limit to Asgard cloning technology.

With each successive generation of clones, the new bodies had suffered from minute genetic instabilities as a result of the process. The mistake had been a recursive error and one that the Asgard had been unable to correct at their current level of technology by the time it was discovered.

In their efforts to find a way to undo the damage the Asgard had unknowingly wrought upon their race one of their research teams had come in contact with the replicators and things had gone downhill from there.

Contrary to Thor's belief, the Asgard Scientist Loki was not completely morally bankrupt.

He did have at least **one** ethical bone in his body. It was just that when faced with the extinction of his race and the fall of the galaxy to the G oa'uld Loki found himself willing to go that one step further.

Sometimes he crossed the line, but sometimes, he got lucky. Whatever the outcome Loki felt prepared to deal with even the most outlandish developments that might prop up when traveling across the universe, on a mission to save his species.

So contrary to orders from the Asgard Supreme Council, Loki was in high geosynchronous orbit above Earth, over an island called Great Britain.

He was currently trying to find the source of a malfunction that was causing his matter-energy transmitters to pick up everything but the targeted objects that he intended to bring aboard.

This was an occurrence that given the nature of Asgard safety protocols, considering that they were the safety protocols of Loki's ship, should have been next to impossible.

And Loki wasn't leaving orbit until he found out what was happening and why, especially since his vessel's hyperspace window generators weren't working either.

The other day Loki had played host to a Terran bovine, and the week before that the transporters had brought up a human stage performer who had taken one look at Loki and fainted.

The pair of rabbits that jumped out of the man's top hat had escaped into the bowels of his ship when Loki sent the man away and the malfunction was making it difficult to use internal sensors without periodically picking up something called the Play Mate channel.

Loki already knew that things wouldn't end well when the transporters activated by _remote command_ and brought aboard a Terran infant alive for apparently one solar cycle.

He had moved to activate the emergency security protocols then stopped at the sight of the slightly puckered scar on the child's brow.

It was a variation of the symbol of Odin, the Asgard identifier for Sol symbolizing the triumph of light over darkness, a positive sign.

The next second the baby began to cry and the emergency security protocols transported _Loki_ into the specimen chamber which went into full lockdown.

The good news for Loki that he could glean from his restricted access to the computer core was the fact that the ship had jumped into hyperspace, in the direction of Othala, the bad news for Loki was that they were headed on a collision course with Hala's sun.

That and the fact that he was almost certain the rabbits were laughing at him.

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**Death Be not Proud**

**by John Donne (Azkaban convict number 225)  
(1572-1631)**

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee  
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,  
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,  
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.  
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,  
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,  
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,  
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.  
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,  
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,  
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,  
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;  
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,  
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

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**AN: Ten thousand words takes a long time to write and even longer to proof read. And I still don't think that I got everything. Well to address certain concerns, I'm going to be busy for a while, updates will be slow. To answer reviews, the First chapter was just an overview of what I expected the story to become, it's something that was born from reading stargate fan fictions so I may have snagged a few ideas but its largely going to progress in a rather original, as original as HP fanfics can get anyway, direction. **

**There are going to be stories told from the perspectives of several of the protagonists of which Harry is but one. For those of you who were blind-sided by HP popping up, get used to it, the next few chapters are going to be about him Starting with the next chapter titled The Unnatural Child. To note, a colonel general is one of the USAF wartime general officer ranks above brigadier, usually only issued during wartime. TTFN.**


	3. Chapter 3

**This story is a work of fanfiction and any similarities to the characters of any television, film or literary work is completely intentional. The author does not in any way shape or form profit from the following work nor claims any responsibility for the efforts of others. Said author acknowledges that they simply weren't cool enough to think of something like this on their own. The following story is a fanfiction cross-over. **

The Unnatural Child

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Ten thousand years ago Moros Myr lived, loved, taught, left descendents and ascended. Mismatched eyes looked upon a breathtaking ocean view. One eye was a bright emerald green, seeming to almost glow in the shadow of his floppy straw hat, the other was a midnight blue with a slightly violet tinge, dark enough to pass for brown or black in the right light. Both were colors he had used in his past life.

After millennia of studying the mysteries of the universe he came to a conclusion about humans that many human sages would eventually come to realize over the years. Humanity was fucked.

Approximately two thousand, four hundred and thirty years ago, 450 BCE Merlin the Wizard appeared. He raised a boy to be a king and took a band of brave and honorable men on an adventure through time and space. He tried to teach the few gifted descendants of the Alterans their ancestor's scientific approach toward 'magic' and quite without meaning to became a legend.

Originally the emergence of the new humans had been a part of an anthropological experiment into the origins of their race. It was never the intentions of those who had first postulated the idea of the study to create a separate sentient species based on their own. A few rogue scientists desired to bring those ideas into fruition and a recently terraformed world secretly became host to first one, then two, then a hundred of the new hominid precursors. By the time that the Governing Council realized what was happening the first few thousand of the Second Evolution was born.

God created man and said…"What the hell am I doing?!"

What was done could not be undone and after fierce debate the Council's decision to allow the experiment to continue under proper supervision was passed by a narrow majority. This was the first divisive decision of the many that eventually led to the division of their people into the Ori and the Altera.

Should they allow humanity to evolve or destroy them, should they alleviate their suffering or leave them be, should they teach them or allow them to learn at their own pace. Should humans be guided and led or allowed to find their own path, should they rule their creations by virtue of their innate superiority or allow them to rule themselves. Discord and disagreement all stemming from one decision, like a pebble starting a cascade and ending in an avalanche that could not be stopped, the One Race became two and split forevermore.

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**On a Beach as far as the eye can see.**

Yellow polka-dot flip-flops wobbled on skinny feet as Moros Myr twitched his toes and hummed to himself. He sat in a white wooden lawn chair, wearing a floppy straw hat, a loose, light and garishly colored ensemble of beachwear. He rested in the shade of what looked like the bastard lovechild of a palm tree and a fern. He sipped a cool green liquid from a clear glass and sighed as the ocean breeze carried the distant cries of sea raptors to his ears.

Shif, Shuf, Shif, Shuf.

The sound of sandaled feet crunching the brittle sand underfoot drifted to him but Moros had known of his visitor long before she had manifested herself in this realm of existence. The were never truly enemies, merely colleagues of differing opinions and even then they had respected each other even as each worked to thwart the actions of the other, but that was in the distant past…or the far future, time was subjective, where-ever, when-ever here was.

Nearly a millennium and a half after his supposed capture and imprisonment Moros or Merlin as he had been called at the time had made use of a little project of another Alteran, the use of which he had actually derided in his foolish youth. Mere hours before the time of his imprisonment by 'Morgana', Merlin had gone on a little side trip to see how certain of his plans were developing and basically have one last hurrah before meeting up with Miss Killjoy to negotiate a truce. If he had known of the trap that Ganos had left in that cave he would have spent another century in the pleasure quarters of Babylon before returning home. The girls there could do such interesting things with a pointy conical hat, hot wax and a perverted old man.

Fortunately Ganos hadn't killed him, she had even agreed with some of his goals and had arranged things to stop him but still preserve his work. It had meant spending a thousand in stasis, his body trapped in time. Still, for someone like Moros time was a matter of opinion, and his opinion was that it didn't matter at all. Dark eyes in a beautiful, brown face surveyed his amused visage without surprise. There was no reason for surprise, his body might be caged but no one could chain his mind.

Full lips pressed together in disapproval.

"You did this." She said, and it wasn't a question.

"You caused a stir among the Others." The being known as Ganos Lal continued, "You helped two people to ascend and interfered in the development of a human."

Merlin's creased face wrinkled even further as he laughed and in a challenging tone replied. "Why do you think it was me? There are others that help people ascend all the time." Placing the beverage in his hands at his feet he turned to Ganos Lal and looked her in the eyes. "As for the interference bit, if you could prove it you wouldn't just be coming here to point fingers."

Looking nonplussed the woman took a deep breath before releasing an exasperated sigh. Walking closer to his side she primly sat in an elegantly styled, silver sun chair that had materialized next to Moros in their current plane of reality. Arranging herself so as to lie facing him she gave a wry grimace as she reluctantly admitted just what had caused their brethren to have a conniption.

"We felt two humans begin to ascend, but we lost track of them…"

"Lost track of them, lost track of them!" Moros roared in laughter, causing Ganos to scowl.

She momentarily closed her eyes in quiet dignity while Moros howled with slightly exaggerated humor. She wouldn't have been here at all if her curiosity hadn't overridden her pride.

The Ascended were not all knowing, god-like beings although their power and knowledge made it seem as if they were. Ascension did not magically grant an individual all the knowledge and power in the universe, Ascension merely made it possible for one to pursue greater knowledge and with it, power if they so wished.

Imagine for instance a child living in a controlled environment for years, unable to travel or learn anything beyond what was allowed. The sum of that child's knowledge and ability would be defined by their environment and available information and limited by their natural ability and motivations.

Being an ascended being was like moving from the state of that child to a state of being where one was free to spend as much time as they wished, doing what they willed with little to no limitation placed on time or space. One began with only the knowledge that one attained as a corporeal being, and a basic understanding of the forces of the universe.

From that point onward the ascended simply traveled wherever they wished, learned from their observations of the universe with senses that no physical being could think of possessing. They swam with bosons and muons, they danced to the tune of quantum strings, bathed in the fire of stars and stared into the darkness of quantum singularities.

They studied in the universe that was their laboratory and they learned by experiences no mortal could know and from what insights the others ascended chose to share. An Ascended could take however long they needed in the pursuit of knowledge for they were ageless beings.

So while some of the Ascended Alterans may have been able to observe what was within their ability to perceive and learn what was within their ability to study, only Ganos Lal who knew of Moros' work on quantum phase shift technology during his time as Merlin would understand or even suspect what had happened to the two newly ascended beings.

Moros Myr took in his fellow ascended's poorly hidden curiosity and came to a decision, there wasn't anything that she could do after all without breaking the rules of the Others. Even if she shared what she learned with them Moros technically hadn't broken any of their rules. Pointing the way wasn't the same as opening the door.

Ganos Lal's face betrayed her unease when she saw Merlin's expression, she blanched after only hearing the first few words out of his mouth. Outrage and amazement, amusement andd terror warred within her as she screamed at the smirking man.

"**You… Did…WHAT?!" **

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**Somewhere, Somewhen**

The truth of the matter was that the key to ascension lay not in science, or in the wisdom of buddhist koans, or in any particular religion or system of belief or magical mystery. The key to ascension, to put things simply, lay in the answer to a question that had been asked by sentient corporeals since they first evolved in the universe and came to realize a simple fact.

Eventually, all things with form must come to an end…

And knowing this, the question becomes, how will you face your end when it comes?

The fearful quiver,

The cowards cower,

The brave (though mostly the stupid) rage impotently,

The courageous stand in spite of their fear,

The resigned wait with resignation,

The content (and at times the insane or unhappy) wait eagerly,

And those who have mutilated their spirits beyond all hope of recovery fall screaming into the dark

All things with form must eventually shed the limits of corporeal existence...

And ascend.

Some few beings possess the unquantifiable quality of mind and spirit to choose to limit the degree to which they merge with the forces of the universe and of those, fewer still, choose to deny the humbling, terrifying majesty of always and everything. Those that walk the path of ascension ask only the one question of themselves and others.

Are you good, or are you evil?

They were limited by the circumstances of their ascension to a nearly infinite number of sub-dimensions as per the agreement that Lily had made years ago. It was a lot more than either could have conceived, less than they could have wanted, but they could see and interact with their son, so long as he remained ignorant of the true nature of their aid or at least, chose not to inquire more deeply than was allowed.

It was a hell and heaven of their choosing.

As the beings once known as James and Lily Potter watched the adventures of their son they could only hope that what they had was enough.

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**Asgard Protected Planet Cimmeria**

Gairwyn didn't know quite what to think of the new comers. The winter storms had suddenly taken a turn for the worse that night as her people gathered together in the communal banquet hall for heat and drink around the great roaring fire, hoping to defeat the ill wind by feasting on the haunches of a ram and two boars slaughtered that evening and cooked over the fire pits in the center of the banquet hall. Young Barda, her sisters and the other village women served warm mead and hot food to the men and watered wine and hot goat's milk to the children.

Gairwyn had sent two of the women Denu and Svanhilda to fetch a new barrel of mead to help her distract her husband Aesic and his brothers from the dangerous game of axes that the men were playing near the entrance of the hall. She had just called out to Aesic when the doors to the hall had flown open with a crash. She watched with horror as the throwing axe left Aesic's startled hand and flipped end over end toward a figure obscured by wind driven snow. Her shock was so great that she never questioned how the door that was supposed to have been barred from the _inside_ was opened.

"_Woden knows it was an accident."_ She thought, knowing even before the axe hit that it would be a killing blow.

But, before the amazed eyes of all assembled, the snow obscured figure resolved into that of a strange old man who raised a scarred, bony fist and with deceptive speed smashed the side of the axe with a powerful blow. A blow that was strong enough to swat the weapon out of the air and into a wall where it fell to the ground with a clatter. So shocked were they that the watching villagers lost their normal fearless cheer. For the first time upon meeting a stranger, many simply gaped with open mouthed shock until the wind cut off when the doors to the hall closed with a thunderous boom. The noise was so startling that Olaf's betrothed Gerta collapsed to the floor in faint with a sigh.

Gaerwyn only spared the woman a momentary look of scorn before she focused on details that she hadn't noticed before. Details like the scrawny child of seven harvests and of average height for a boy of his age. He had thin arms, legs and knobby knees. He stood in the shadow of the old man who stood not more than a hand-span taller than the child himself.

She felt a jolt of shock run through her at the thought the boy had been the one to close the doors. Even Gaerwyn herself who was used to tough labor when her man was away and could easily handle an adult sow with brute strength alone would have been daunted by the task of closing the heavy wooden doors on her own. Let alone the fact that the child had done so while pushing against the storm wind.

"_Thor and Woden did at times journey disguised as men so the legends say." _She thought as she struggled to speak but her husband Aesic found his voice first and was the one to greet the travelers.

"Hail thee! Traveler." He spoke in a heavily accented voice a language that an earth linguist would have described as being an early Scandinavian dialect with some Old Germanic words mixed in. His discomfort at the manner of their meeting showed in his slightly antagonistic greeting.

"I am Aesic, son of Ulfgar, the leader and protector of these people. I beg thee indulgence in the manner of my earlier greeting but who are you that braves the storms of this night, and with a youngling no less? Tell us what are you called and from where you hail so that all may know you in our hall as either welcome friend or hated foe."

"_What are you?"_ He had almost said, _"What manner of man, or beast, or god, are you to brush my axe aside." _

Grim, grey eyes deeply set in a wrinkled and battle-scarred face looked back at them all. Eyes that seemed to almost look through Gairwyn, through to her innermost secrets as they seemed to weigh and judge her before moving on to gaze upon the others.. He did not even top Gairyn's own six hand-spans yet by his regal manner seemed even taller that the huge shadow cast behind him.

Gairwyn started in alarm for a moment as the man's shadow seemed to change into that of a wolf for a second before her crazed thoughts were stilled by a giggle from little Laerke. It was then that she noticed that the child beside the traveler was playing with her shadow. She felt a thrill of amusement as she realized what must have happened and calmed her mind.

Any feeling of amusement fled when the traveler spoke. The man's voice thundered out powerfully with a sound akin to clashing rocks. His bent, aged and withered frame seemed at odds with the power of his voice and caused every man and woman in the hall to pay attention as it grew fainter as he spoke. His tone did not weaken it merely seemed to rumble past like thunder from the hills.

"I am Ulfr the Swift, son Oeric, son of Bardulfr, this child…" He gestured to the boy. "This child is Anundr, son of Anliefr, son Ulfr, kin to my blood. I am friend to the kind and just, enemy to oppressors and murderers. We…have traveled far and hard."

With nothing more than a glare the villagers had been shamed by this Ulfr into providing a place at the hall for the traveler. They would have done so regardless in honor of Woden and Thor who protected travelers and punished the ungracious host.

Ulfr proved to be a taciturn man indeed. He neither ate a scrap of meat nor spoke a word until a full horn of mead was provided. He drained it in but a single draught and fed the dregs to the child over the protestations of Danu who was cowed with a single look. The woman slunk away and ended up telling off some wrestling children. The boy was fed small cuts of mutton and some hot fat from the boar at Gairwyn's insistence to help combat the cold.

After they were fed, Gairwyn and the other villagers slowly gained the traveler's story in short terse comments and one word answers. The picture that grew filled Gairwyn with pity, though mostly for the boy. The most fanciful of gossipers would later call the odd child as a foreign prince for his unusually dark hair and fair complexion, already the sleepy child's emerald green eyes had entranced little Laerke. Some whispered of elfin blood but Gairwyn scoffed at that.

From lengthy and mostly one-sided conversation the villagers learned that Anundr's mother had died shortly after his birth and his father killed in a dispute with another tribe. Ulfr had taken over as guardian of the boy and had traveled from place to place before coming to her people's land by ship from the far, _far_ north.

Aesic's younger siblings, Wulfric and Wulfrham fearlessly pestered the old man for tales of his travels with wanderlust shining in their young eyes. The old man's meager words were treated like gold and in the minds of the young teens probably became the most fanciful of adventures. Aesic's elder brother Bjorn kept the two from pestering Ulfr past the diminutive man's patience while his wife Inga helped Barda fetch another cask of mead. Bjorn handled trading the wool provided by Aesic's flocks and as the most well traveled of the villagers he knew what it was like to be the focus of the twin's enthusiasm.

The travelers spent the night in the hall and the next day departed for a piece of unclaimed farmland on the far outskirts of the village on which they built a homestead. None save Bjorn had seen it and he was unusually tightlipped on the matter. It seemed that Ulfr had obtained three goats, and a dozen hens in addition to enough feed, grain and other materials to create a small farm.

After no less than two days of prodding Bjorn was finally convinced to share his story.

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**Two days after the arrival of Ulfr and Anundr at the Community Hall**

Bjorn was, at least in the eyes of his people, a well traveled man. He didn't actually mind leaving home a few months every year, given Inga's temperament getting away from her for half a season was actually a good idea that had done wonders for his marriage. He trusted Inga, and his brothers, to be faithful to him and knew that she was a good mother to young Ursel and Torben. She was always grateful for his warmth in her bed during the winter months and welcomed him with great enthusiasm.

Bjorn paused briefly on the forest trail he was walking as the thought of Inga's embrace sent a thrill through him that even the gathered frost could not chase away. The last storm of the season had been unexpectedly brutal and he knew that Aesic would have to put a lot of work into the stables until the snow cleared. It was yet another reason he loved traveling. His wife and bond-sister had insisted that either he or Aesic journey to the place that Ulfr had indicated that he would be building his farmstead to see how they fared.

It was a place on the opposite side of the village from the location of the Hammer of Thor. The farmstead was located almost the same distance away from the holding of Kendra the witch that Gairwyn had visited a few days before the storm and planned to visit a few days later when the snow cleared.

Whatever Bjorn might have expected, what he found was not it.

From the way that Ulfr had been speaking Bjorn had surmised that they had traveled here overland with some animals and had settled into a natural cave for the winter. With what feed they had going to the animals Ulfr and his grandson had decided to conserve their dwindling resources by spending the night at Aesic's hall. Bjorn had expected to find a handful of half-wild goats and perhaps a mule but instead had been treated to three of the most magnificent specimens of a work horse that he had ever seen.

Without even wondering how Ulfr had crept up on him from behind Bjorn had breathlessly offered to trade for one of the horses with the man. After nearly four hours of intense negotiation the eldest son of Ulfgar had obtained a horse that was literally worth its weight in gold anywhere in Cimmeria and Ulfr knew it.

"By Loki's third tit your Gammlefar can haggle!" He remembered remarking to Anundr. Only belatedly did he remember how young the child truly was as the boy fell into a hysterical fit of laughter at the comment. However even grim Ulfr seemed amused and was even more so when Bjorn realized that only one of the three horses was a stallion and that sly Ulfr had traded away the older mare. The animal was still valuable but the one that Bjorn truly wanted to get his hands on was the stallion that stood higher at the shoulder than he was tall. Bjorn was a very tall man.

He had been willing to offer a small herd of sheep for the other two animals but Ulfr had refused even with an additional offer of aid to help build their homestead. Ulfer had instead offered to provide the horse as a sire for the other work horses Aesic owned in return for ale, mead and seed crops as well as first pick from every third mating season. Baldric had reluctantly agreed knowing that he would not get a better offer.

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**Cimmeria three years and seven months after the coming of Ulfr and Anundr**

Eight year old Laerke and six year old Ursel deeply admired wild Anundr as Laerke's mother Svenja often called the boy. The child was unusually quick of both body and mind. His sunny disposition charmed even those few villagers who were inclined to distrust outsiders and he stayed on Gairwyn and Inga's good side by offering to run small errands for them when he was in the village instead of locked up in the hut caring for Grim Ulfr as _he_ was called.

Always ready to run or swim or wrestle with Torben and the other boys, herd sheep, soothe work horses, watch the youngest children and run errands even for the so called witch, Kendra, young Anundr grew into a popular, strong and healthy boy. He had brilliant emerald green eyes and wild, untamed ebony locks that fell to his shoulders framing an increasingly angular face with the beginnings of a strong jaw and slightly aquiline nose, the jagged scar on his brow served only to give him a wild look.

Often he could be seen about the village and gossip over the years had alluded that he was the child of elves. The boy certainly acted the part, at times spending entire days climbing the trees out in the woods with one of the mated pair of skogkatter that always seemed to follow him around. Often one or more of the villager children would search him out during those times and they would play until the children were summoned by their parents or as was happening more and more often Anundr by Ulfr.

Lately however, Laerke had noticed that Anundr was growing more and more distant, until finally she secretly overheard a horrible conversation through an open door.

"Did you hear, Old Sourface finally decided to sell that stud horse of his to Wulfrham." Svanhilda gossiped excitedly to her sister as they sat peeling potatoes for a stew they were making.

"_**Sell it**__!_Whatever for?!" Svenja asked amazed. "How did he manage to convince that bitter old miser to do it and what did he trade for it?"

"Well" Svanhilda looked uneasy for a moment before answering, "I really not sure, Ram never said how it happened in detail, just that Ulfr was the one to make the offer to sell it." She finished lamely.

Svenja didn't need to voice her disbelief; her expressive face said it all.

The younger woman ducked her head in reply and fidgeted before she continued. "Ulfr met with Da for a while and the next that I knew Wulfrham was telling me that Ulfr had offered to sell the stallion to Ram if he agreed to see to it that the homestead was cared for when he and Anundr left on a quest. Wulfrham and I had an understanding before and…He asked me to marry him and Da approved! "

Svenja and Laerke were left speechless though for different reasons. Svenja erupted in squeals of excitement for her sister while her daughter Laerke wept and ran off in search of Anundr.

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**High Geosynchronous Orbit above 'Ulfr's' Cabin **

Of those less advanced races that met the Asgard under amicable circumstances there was an unfortunate tendency to mistake the patient nature of their chosen spokesmen, usually Thor or Freyr, for weakness. The fragile nature of their bodies certainly contributed to that as well. However as any Goa'uld or Jaffa child could attest, the might of the Asgard was nothing to make light off and though slow to anger they were a passionate people fully capable of utterly devastating their enemies. The Goa'uld _still_ trembled at the thought of what just **one **Asgard Mothership could do and in spite of their bravado few Goa'uld dared to anger an Asgard.

Hermiod hated kids, Anundr irritated him to distraction on multiple occasions and did so with impunity by virtue of his childhood.

If he hadn't hated children before now, then almost ten years in close contact with the Alteran-human hybrid had cemented that opinion. It was not as though he hated his charge specifically, he simply hated all children in general. They were noisy, smelly, needy and selfish. And Hermiod hated selfish people.

Hermiod would have added stupid to that list but if he had to admit one thing in Anundr's favor, he would admit that the child was a genius, even by Asgard standards which was saying something.

Their periodic dialogues in esoteric high energy physics in subspace and the hyperspatial, polyphasic, quantum interactions of lepto-particles, filled a need in Hermiod for meaningful discussion.

It was actually the only good thing about being assigned to assist Hiemdall in caring for this child. By the time that he was seven Anundr, as he was known among the Asgard had been working on several fields of study related to the very cutting edge of Asgard weapon, computer and medical technology. It was his idea to use pure neutronium blast doors and a neutronium based alloy throughout Asgard ships to slow the rate of Replicator encroachment.

Of far more interest to the High Council was the fact that Anundr had displayed the ability to temporarily command small numbers of Replicators and permanently deactivate them through the use of psionics. The exact 'How' of what he could do had never been answered but the Asgard had been able to create a device to recreate similar effect with increasingly mixed results. The pace of the war had briefly turned in the Asgard's favor but little by little the Replicators were adapting to the weapon.

Anundr was crushed and Hiemdall who held ultimate responsibility for all decisions made regarding his person, and keeping Loki the hel away from him, had suggested relocation to a safer human populated world. Anundr had been raised as Hiemdall had hoped to raise a child of her own, which didn't turn out as bad as say if Loki was allowed to raise him. However Anundr was human and needed experience in interacting with others of his kind.

Back when Anundr had first been found and the Asgard council had been strongly in favor of returning him to his parents. No one believed Loki's story of being pulled through hyperspace by a mysterious force commanded by Terran, _Oryctolagus cuniculus_ or in other words_,_ rabbits.

The war against the Replicators had forced them to make the decision to keep the Alteran child in their care while efforts were underway to locate the child's parents. Hiemdall had been the first to first to petition for custody after Loki himself and had been instantly rewarded the position. However as a high ranking scientist for the Asgard council caring for a baby could not possibly be her first priority, Hiemdall needed a nanny.

The Asgard High Council had searched through the list of Asgard that could be trusted to care for Anundr, which disqualified Loki's application, to try to find an individual that was of minimal importance to the war effort that no Asgard would object to seeing go very, far away from Hala. Hermiod's name had shot to the top of the List much to his annoyance.

Cimmeria had been settled upon as an appropriately safe world to relocate the child and continue his studies. While some Asgard had at first argued that this was an opportune time to relocate the child to earth, there were concerns that previous scout missions had failed to locate any sign of where Anundr had originated from even using the corrupted logs that Sigyn had reclaimed from the memory core of Loki's science vessel Svadilfari

Using holographic projector technology modified by Anundr with Hermiod's aid they had created a three-dimensional imager with the ability to make tactile contact using a modified Alteran personal defense shield technology. Anundr had also worn one when they had originally transported to the planet in the middle of a snow storm.

It had been Anundr's idea over Hermiod's protestation to establish a presence in the minds of the people living in the village near to the gate. A small science vessel had set down on the planet under the cover of the storm and used cloaking technology and holographic imaging to appear to be a part of the hillside.

With the judicious use of the transporters on Hiemdall's larger Mothership class science vessel, also Anundr's suggestion, they had beamed aboard three mustangs from a rare wild herd and using cloning technology, done their part to aid the equine population saving three for use in trading for what Anundr called human food.

Hiemdall's ship had made periodic visits to the planet but an event had come to pass that required Hermiod to take his ship into orbit and send a brief message burst to his fellow scientist. Somehow, contact had been made with earth, and Hermiod and Anundr were going to investigate this school that he had been invited to. Hermiod hadn't commented on Anundr's poorly hidden melancholy, the child always insisted on acting like an adult despite the strange softness that most Asgard seemed to regard him with.

Hermiod couldn't care less, yet, as he listened to a tearful conversation that his charge was having with a certain Cimmerian girl he couldn't stop the look of distaste that spread across his features. He would have to show Anundr the progress that he had made on working with the new personal defense device that he and Anundr had been working on, some of the features were a little extreme in nature but Hermiod had included them any way. It was his duty to protect his charge after all.

Hermiod blinked rapidly as he listened to a very melodramatic goodbye. It must have been irritation caused by those cats that had somehow wormed their way onto his ship, he mused. Though he thought it was strange the way that most animals seemed to flock to Anundr in pairs. The grouchy Asgard sniffed in disdain then gave a slight sneeze. Yes, Hermiod definitely hated children.

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**The Ministry of Magic, Wizengamot chambers England.**

A sharp cadence of footsteps echoed through the hall. The noise was almost enough to drown out the sound of muffled whimpering, emanating from the Wizengamot chambers.

A tall, dark man walked away from the Chamber with an air of grim satisfaction. He was a man who would have been described as handsome were it not for his impassive, unsmiling visage and the palpably murderous air that hung about his presence. He swept up the stairs and into an open elevator. Those awaiting a ride seemed oddly content to allow him the sole use of that conveyor. Sometimes it helped to have the reputation of being an insane, mass murderer even if he hadn't managed to kill the one person that he had wanted to get his hands on.

"The Atrium!" Sirius Black snarled.

"_So I made Fudge cry…" _He thought derisively. _"That should teach the arrogant poofter not to bend over for Malfoy."_

The Grim Lord Black, in the privacy of the elevator grinned viciously through his beard and mustache. Cold, dark eyes sparkled murderously under finely curled, flowing locks. There was little for him to be happy about aside from the coming's and goings of his friend and cousins. The ones that he actually **didn't **want to kill that is. The past few days had had seen Sirius celebrate what would have been Harry's eleventh birthday in style, by bringing corruption charges against dear Lucius, Walden Macnair and Thoefinn Rowle.

The report had not detailed all of the recipients of the bribes and blackmail threats that the three had been involved in making. Fudge's blustering assurances that the investigation would pursue the information 'forthwith' and the man's complexion upon hearing Madam Bones cold assurance of that fact left Special Investigator to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement Sirius Black in no doubt as to how high the rot had spread.

Macnair and Rowle had been imprisoned on thirty counts of assault with the intention to do grievous harm, twelve counts of bribery, and one count each of obstructing a Ministry investigation. They were facing nearly ten years of imprisonment in Azkaban and a seizure of all funds used in the plot. Lucius Malfoy had very nearly been convicted since the vast majority of the funds used had been traced back to him by Remus, but by providing seven of the twelve names on the list and arguing that he himself had been a victim of intimidation the slime of a man had escaped imprisonment to Sirius' disgust. Although the wizard was certain that the snake's freedom had less to do with justice and more to do with a certain Minister's wish to remain 'unnamed'.

Sirius' quiet fuming was interrupted by a soft echoing voice from behind him.

"_You're going to get some rather horrid wrinkles like that you know."_ The specter of James Potter observed.

"I had him in my hands and he slipped away again Prongs." Sirius moaned in impotent rage.

Sirius was completely unsurprised by the manifestation of a friend that he had heretofore believed to be dead. Ghostly manifestations were normal in the wizarding world although this particular ghost seemed to haunt Sirius exclusively and at times appeared in the presence Remus Lupin though not any other wizard. During his short stay in Azkaban before Dumbledore and the ministry under Bagnold had fished him out to learn the whereabouts of Harry Potter; James' ghost had been one of the things that had Saved Sirius' sanity.

The dementors seemed afraid to approach whenever the apparition was near and none were tempted due to the fact that Sirius viewed James' presence as a rebuke for his failure as a friend which was certainly not a happy thought.

James' constant presence, Sirius' animagus form and their constant conversation helped to preserve much of Black's sanity during those four bleak years. His soft urging to tell his story had eventually led to Sirius' release when his testimony was given under the influence of veritaserum before the whole of the Wizengamot. The news of his innocence had given his mother a heart-attack before she could reverse the decision to reinstate him as her heir.

It had been one of the two blows that had ended Barty Crouch Sr.'s political aspirations. The knowledge that not only had the man's son been a Death Eater but that a grieving, innocent man had been imprisoned without trial under Crouch's orders was a one-two knockout combination. Especially when Sirius had later killed Rodulphus Lestrange when the fugitive Death Eater had escaped custody and tried to torture Sirius for the location of the Boy-Who-Lived.

Eager to separate himself from the taint of the former Ministry's incompetence the new Undersecretary Fudge had in his personally presented Sirius with an Order of Merlin Second Class as well as a substantial reward for helping to capture Lestrange. Sirius remembered that event even now in the elevator.

"Yes, yes, I believe we can work together Sirius." Fudge had whispered confidentially before the reporters. "Let bygones be bygones, forget the past and create a solid future without You-Know-Who."

"_Let bygones, be bygones."_

Sirius had accepted the reward, rejected the medal and before the end of the day had filed a petition with the ICW to sue the Ministry of Magic on charges of wrongful imprisonment. The matter had been settled for an unnamed sum and with Sirius in the newly created officer of Special Investigator for the Head of Magical Law Enforcement. A type of auror who investigated crimes that occurred within the ministry as well as the actions of government officials who were deemed to be abusing their authority. It was an internal investigation department that only had three members and was often swamped with nonsensical cases. Sirius suspected that this was done deliberately, but the briefs that he could get to Madam Bones more than satisfied his need for a pound of flesh.

The apparition of James Potter sadly watched his friend slip into dark brooding again. Suddenly he grinned.

"_Well I know something IN-TE-REST-ING!!"_He sing-songed.

Sirius looked to his friend in curiosity ignoring the opening of the elevator doors and the frightened people who waited for him to leave.

James smiled encouragingly. _"A certain flaming turkey might have managed to deliver a very special letter to a certain little boy, hidden far, far away. Monsieur Prongs doth think that Mssrs. Moony and Padfoot would do well to inquire further."_

Sirius was off like a shot in the dark.

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**AN: Shorter and hopefully better written, I'm glad to see such enthusiastic responses to this story even if most readers were thrown off by the sharp left turn of the second chapter. **

**To reassure you, WTF, is going to be a rather common response I expect, to this story. Two days of research into names with Old Norse roots and the Norweigan word for Grandfather, Gammelfar, or was it Swedish, went into the Cimmeria chapters. Proofreading this was a bitch but the third and fourth chapters are already planned. The next chapter is titled Right or Easy. TTFN **


	4. Chapter 4

****

**ffThis story is a work of fanfiction and any similarities to the characters of any television, film or literary work is completely intentional. The author does not in any way shape or form profit from the following work nor claims any responsibility for the efforts of others. Said author acknowledges that they simply weren't cool enough to think of something like this on their own. The following story is a fanfiction cross-over. **

**Right or Easy**

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"Ooooh! Miss Witch December is actually the Witches December, we know them too, remember the Stackpole Twins, Cumalot and Vagina?" The ghost lounging in his cell asked lasciviously.

The person being spoken to stirred slightly in amusement. "Camlain and Virginia." He corrected automatically.

"Yeah, those two were screamers, Lils and I, we were an item back then but I can tell you that I've never felt more pride as a man than when you bagged those two." The apparition confessed.

Chains clinked lightly as he shifted his position. "Good to know that you appreciated it." Sirius replied dryly.

The ghost tilted his head in consideration. "Did that come out a little too gay? Well it's not like we were listening deliberately, Lily heard a thump in the back room, and then when all that screaming started we were concerned." Transparent brown eyes turned to his companion, a mischievous glint in them even in death. "Say," He started. "I never asked...Why were you screaming?"

Sirius deflected the question. "I didn't think that you'd hear through the muffling charm, I would have used a silencing charm but things happened pretty quickly."

"I was hard not to notice, Lily and I were in the next room and the walls were shaking. The three of you knocked all the dust and cobwebs from the ceiling. After she cast the counter charm we wound up listening to you three." The specter grinned. "Got Lils so horny we didn't even have the strength to complain about the bed that you broke." James grinned.

"Er…Sorry about that" Sirius ducked his head.

"No need, Lily and I put unbreakable charms on all the furniture after that, saved us a bundle when we 'christened' the kitchen table." James snickered.

"So that's what that smell was, poor Remus! He was blushing the whole time during the party." Sirius groaned in disgust.

"Apologize to him for me when you get out of here." James said softly.

After a moment of silence the other man answered. "I'm not getting out of here."

James only response was to grin, "You will, sooner than you think."

Then he was gone and Sirius was back to contemplating his madness. Until the staccato of footsteps on stone alerted him to the approach of several people. He was certain that they were people because the _things_ that infested the prison did not walk, they glided. He could even hear a few snippets of speech.

"-quite mad…don't know…dangerous….Dementors won't…near him-"

The soft and dithering voice was interrupted by a baritone.

"-really…idea, Albus?"

"_Albus!"_

The voice of the headmaster of Hogwarts School for Wizardry and Witchcraft echoed in his cell as the Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump stopped outside his cell.

"We need to know where Harry is as soon as possible, the former followers of You-Know-Who may be seeking him out even as we speak!" Albus Dumbledore replied in a quiet voice filled with urgency.

"B-but what if he's dead?" Crouch asked, reaching for a reason not to open the cell of a man he viewed as a mass murderer.

Dumbledore was quiet for a moment before speaking, testing his words as if unsure of what he wanted to reveal to the Junior Minister for Magical Law Enforcement in the presence of the dementors.

"Certain measures were taken." He said. "That allow me to ascertain the health of young Harry, he seems to be alive for the moment and we need to find his location to ensure that he stays that way."

"Measures you say." asked Crouch with interest.

Dumbledore deflected the unspoken question with a non-answer. "As part of the security placed on his home."

"_What's he talking about?"_ Sirius wondered as he shuffled to the back of his cell, knowing what would come next.

"_Oh. He's using a certain family heirloom that I left in his care, a clever spell lets him do more than just monitor young Harry's health but it's not working the way that he intended it to."_ James' voice whispered into Sirius' ear. _"This is your chance, all that you have to do is tell them the truth."_

"It's all my fault." He moaned.

"_Tell them why…"_ Whispered the voice. _"And don't forget our motto."_

"Deny, deny, deny?" Sirius asked.

"Can you hear him?" Muttered the warden. "As mad as the rest."

"_No the other motto."_ Came James amused voice.

"I didn't know she was your sister?" He reached.

"_Lily still hasn't forgiven you for that but I meant the motto for when we were really screwed."_ Sighed James.

"Blame it on Snape?" Said Sirius, wondering how that would help him, though the thought of that sniveling Death Eater bat in Azkaban was dangerously pleasant and the dementors outside the door were getting antsy.

"_Noli nothis permittere te terere!"_ James finally related.

The iron chains about his wrists, waist, ankles, and neck retracted until Sirius was painfully restrained to the back wall of his cell in plain sight of the open viewing shutter on his cell door. The smile on his face did not fade event when the first of two dementors swept into his cell followed by two aurors with a third auror and the warden stationed outside with the two men responsible for sending him to Azkaban, Albus Dunbledore and Bartemius Crouch Sr.

"Sirius Black, prisoner number 390." Called Crouch in a strong baritone voice filled with contempt. "In accordance with Ministerial Order number 356670-9 You are hereby remanded into the custody of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and held for trial on this December of 1985."

Crouch's loud voice echoed in the cramped cell like thunder from the gods but if he was expecting Sirius Black to cower he was sorely disappointed. The man's smile grew wider as he held onto his motto in spite of the dementor driven cold.

"_Don't let the bastards grind you down."_

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**1983 Spinner's End**

It may have pleased Sirius greatly to know that Severus Snape was sharing in his apparition-caused misery. It had started the night after he had learned of Lily's death. Oh how he had raged in the Dumbledore's office at the school, driven over the edge by grief. Then Dumbledore had dropped a bomb. Lily might be dead but her son was alive somewhere. Albus had showed him the proof, a scrying artifact linked to the child's blood using a Potter family heirloom.

The device was shaped like a music box and contained three strands of hair, two black and one red resting on top of Potter's invisibility cloak. It showed that the child was alive, from time to time revealing hints of the infant's face in the small palm-sized mirror.

"_By Hecate! He has her eyes!" _

Dumbledore had pressed him, ruthlessly using his love for Lily and his guilt at being involved in her death. The wizard had extracted his oath that night, upon his life to work to defend the boy child, his oath to protect what was left of Lily.

But there was nothing to protect, the child remained missing despite of Dumbledore's attempts to find him. But he was alive and hopefully safe. Severus had quested among his former Death Eater colleagues and found that they were as clueless as he was or at least pretended to be.

The one being that he could ask he didn't dare to. He had mentioned it indirectly to her and learned only that Harry was safe and alive, he had fled before he was driven made by the urge to touch her. By _her_ he meant the apparition of Lily Evans-Potter that frequently appeared before him and only to him.

He had been attempting to drink himself to death that autumn of 1981, succeeding only in making himself sick as his tears diluted Ogden's finest. He had been weeping alone in the dark and empty house at Spinner's End when she had first appeared.

"Severus." She said soothingly. "Don't cry Severus. Rejoice in your freedom!"

At the sound of that voice, _her_voice, he reeled as if he were struck by a physical blow, overturning his chair and smashing the bottle of firewhiskey on the ground. For the first time in the years since his childhood, Severus Snape cowered on his backside, back against a wall, arms above his head as if in preparation for a physical attack. But the one standing above him was no drunken muggle, seeking the petty satisfaction of beating his freakish son.

This was Lily.

She was the nameless girl that he had often watched pass by of his house on her way home from school. His sunken eyes in a sallow face too used to being locked away like a private shame had often watched her greedily.

Because he knew what she was.

A witch.

They had attended the same public primary, Snape ever aloof from the other children while Lily shone like a star, drawing people to her like moths to a flame.

He had been disinterestedly gazing out at the street one evening as he hid in his room, trying to stay out of his father's way. When she came walking down the sidewalk positively glowing. It was on his second look that he had realized with a start that she _was_ glowing. He knew not what had made her so happy, but Severus fancied that he had seen her first bit of accidental magic.

The sound of the melodious ringing of her footsteps and the sight of the sparkling white dewdrops of light that shook free of her auburn hair stayed with him, as he day-dreamt of her glowing green eyes, even as his father broke the lock on his door and dragged him from his bed for a beating.

Now years later, that beautiful girl, his first love was dead and haunting him. "Severus," He shivered, refusing to respond. "Look at me Severus"

Ah, so the torment had begun he thought, perhaps the remnants of her dying curse, she had killed Voldemort with it after all. But the kind tone of her voice frightened him even more for he feared forgiveness far more than condemnation. At least he was used to the latter, the former was an alien experience that he was not ready for.

"Oh Sev!" Her voice was full of pity.

"I am not worthy!" He hoarsely cried.

A ghostly hand, thin and surrounded by wisps of white light, rested upon his arm, he felt not her touch yet his arm was drawn away from his face by a mysterious force. Haunted dark eyes stared into emerald green orbs.

"I…am not worthy of your pity." He sobbed as tears ran down his cheeks.

"I know what you did Severus, and I know what you did to stop it, I know what you suffer now, thank you Severus. I forgive you." Lily intoned.

Now Snape truly wept, incoherently babbling, confessing his sins, begging for forgiveness, from her and from all he had wronged even as he loudly denied the right to forgiveness. He clutched at his arm as he writhed in mental and physical agony.

"It hurts," He gasped. "It hurts so much."

"Repentance is not easy." Lily replied.

"But I ended up hurting so many people, I couldn't even save you Lily!" Severus cried.

"The outcomes of our actions are seldom within our power to control. We all have choices, our choices affect the choices of others, even as the choices of others affect our own. All one can do is look to the intentions behind our actions as they are the only one thing that matter. In the end, there is only one thing that anyone can truly control. Are you good, or are you evil?" She said.

Hesitantly Severus answered. "I want…" His voice trailed off, filled with regret.

"Hear me Severus, for my son still lives. Long ago, there was a Great Alliance…" Lily began.

None, not even Albus Dumbledore would learn of the secret hidden deep within Severus Snape's mind.

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**1985 Wizengamot Chamber**

The silence was deafening. Actually Sirius thought that the silence was hysterical, it was the sound of several ministerial careers dying in flames. He hadn't been able to properly appreciate the effect that his tale was having on the assembled personages, due to being heavily drugged with Veritaserum as well as other potions designed to make him pliable. Fortunately, James had been kind enough to keep up a running commentary.

"Bagnold's wig just fell off! I think that you may have killed Crouch, wanker looks like he's having a stroke! I didn't know that a human mouth could stretch that far, wish I had a camera, the look on Albus' face! The auror on your left is staring at you in pity, bet you could bag her, after a shave, a meal and a bath." The apparition kept up, talking about the various responses of those assembled as they learned that the government had wrongly imprisoned an innocent man. A very rich and politically powerful, innocent man with an axe to grind.

The quiet didn't last as he was bundled away to a Ministry holding cell, one that was drastically better than the one he had been in last. It was the same cell actually, but without the Dementor guard which was a vast improvement. He was brought back into the chamber after a few days and made to stand before the court. Remus was in the wings, as well as anxious Fudge and a handful of other prominent wizards. A curious crowd including several members of the press watched from the public viewing area. Bagnold had proceeded to speak in a weary voice that he could not gather the strength to listen to.

She was saying something or the other about misfortune and unfortunate times, rambling about difficult decisions, hasty judgments, touching upon the need to believe in the government and doing everything but admitting to an error. It looked like pinning the blame on Crouch hadn't been enough to completely save her career. Finally she magnanimously pronounced that he was innocent of all charges and free to go, looking at him all the while as if she expected him to be grateful. Sirius's response was simple.

"I don't give a fuck." He said. Then he flipped them off, turned around and mooned the entire assembly with his scrawny ass.

The mental image of his picture, wriggling its bum on the front page of the Daily Prophet was what had actually caused Walburga Black to collapse dead just three steps away from the family tapestry.

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**August 1990 Earth**

They watched entranced as the scraggly man with sandy-brown hair aimed the massive handgun between the eyes of a criminal, the other man froze with one eye on the shotgun inches away from his hand. Seeing this, the man with the pistol narrowed his eyes and spoke in a low, menacing voice through clenched teeth.

"I know what you're thinking. Did he shoot six bullets or five? To tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But seeing as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and in one shot, I could blow your head clean off of your shoulders, you've got to ask yourself one question. Are you feeling lucky? Well are ya, punk?"

Flick

"Y-M-C-A!"

Flick

"I am immortal!"

Flick

"-ready for my close up!"

Flick

"-one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!"

Flick

"I, have a dream!"

Flick

"Anything you can I can do better, anything you can do I can do too!"

Flick

"Here's looking at you kid!"

Flick

"I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."

Flick

"No-one is born, knowing of hatred and intolerance, such attitudes must be taught and learned, encouraged until they are accepted."

Flick

"Lucy seeing diamonds in the sky, tangerine trees and marmalade clouds."

Flick

Three ladies and four men are discussing something on a talk-show; the brunette woman is finishing an impromptu lecture.

"Feminism is about the awareness of the way that women should be treated in society, not as sex objects but as equals."

A man with a large, unlit cigar, wearing a turtleneck shirt under an expensive jacket scoffs. "All women are sexy." Eyeing the speaker pointedly he continued. "Unless they're not."

Sneering at the man she shot back. "Your magazine is the worst of the worst examples of the exploitation of women. That is why in my book it clearly states that your company is a menace to the progress of society. Do you think that you would like it if a man posed naked, wearing bunny ears for women to eye as a sex object?!"

Huffner chewed on his cigar thoughtfully, seeming to actually consider the idea, then, he shrugged. "If I could get enough women to buy it, I'd publish a PlayGirl and pose as the centerfold." He waited until the women across from him began to swell with outrage before dropping the other shoe. "It would probably sell twice as well as that snore-fest of a book too."

The talk-show host vainly tried to quell the eruption that followed that comment.

Flick

"Rosebud!"

Flick

A flickering, black and white film displayed the image of a short man with slick hair and a finely cropped mustache giving a speech from the balcony of a palace. It seemed to be a rather important speech as the listening people cheered, raised their children over their heads, threw confetti in the air and gave a strange salute under the giant banner of a black swastika.

Flick

A nuclear bomb detonated off the shore of an uninhabited pacific island.

Flick

A balding man with a scraggly fringe of hair, slaps a stocky man with a buzz-cut, who pokes the eye of a man with a bowl haircut, who kicks the balding man with the scraggly fringe.

Flickf

"May the Force be with you."

Flick

Ragged red cloth and charred bone was all that was left of the man. A group of men and women wearing uniforms color coded red, yellow and blue, respectively surrounded the corpse. The CMO in blue stated the obvious. "He's dead Jim." An officer in yellow nodded distractedly while another in red, cursed aloud. "Damnit, Tommy was gonna transfer out next month! Wanted to be a yellow shirt, at least they got the hot green alien chicks!" The yellow shirts, including a man with sandy brown hair and captain's bars fidgeted at that.

The doctor was not impressed however. "Stow it! It's not like anyone's ever asked **you** to perform emergency brain surgery, to re-attach the brain of an alien anatomy you've never been allowed to study before, using tools that you didn't even know existed before!"

The red clothed ensign still persisted. "At least you get the girls."

The older man's gaze was mercurial. In the background he could see the captain flirting with a pretty nurse. The woman giggled and mouthed. _"I'll bring the baby oil and you'll bring the wine, we'll listen to the Tholian mating calls and see how big you really are."_

Jaded grey eyes grew even grimmer. "Not as often as you think..."

On and on it went, they watched church masses and wars, despots and saints. They saw the greatest and worst of humanity, their art, their music, their poetry, their culture, in all the languages of the developed and developing world, and they hadn't even tapped into the primitive information databases of the planet yet, all of this was reconstructed from just the communication signals that the planet had been generating for decades.

The boy glanced over at his tutor. "Well." He said, "It was not as informative as your lectures, but certainly informative in its own way" He temporized.

He spoke the truth; a good part of his education at the hands of the Asgard had involved the true history and prehistory of Earth and all the sentient beings known to have called the place home. It was interesting being educated in history by someone who had been alive during those times even if they had only been observing from space. To listen to Heimdall and Hermiod human history could be summed up as this, people were born, grew up, had sex, lots and lots of sex; and then they killed each other.

To be fair Heimdall had made it clear that she thought that there was more to human life than that, making babies for instance, but she didn't stop him from coming to his own conclusions about his home world.

While Hermiod worked on downloading information from Earth's primitive databases. Anundr, now identified as Harry, HA-REE, rested for a while as Hermoid ran the scans. The Asgard had been greatly interested in his abilities, exotic energy field manipulation; they called it, in part because they didn't really know just what to call what he could do. While Heimdall had been able to create scanners capable of observing the effects of this energy field, with the aid of other Asgard scientists, even they had found no way of artificially reproducing the effects or even generating exotic energy in any controllable way.

The closest that they had come was a field interaction device that utilized one of Harry's first creations to generate an area of effect where the exotic energy field could be simulated using more controllable forms of energy. The effect on replicators was disastrous, when the device worked.

As he sat in contemplation, Harry rolled a square block in the palm of his had. It was one of the first things that he had created using an ancient Asgard toy given to him by Heimdall, a type of molecular fabricator. He had created the crystal block with inspiration from the 'voices' that he sometimes heard. What had started as an aimless three-dimensional doodle had become a three-hour long project and Hermiod had found him that night working as if in a trance.

What he had eventually created was a cube of 27 cubic centimeters made from a lightly glowing, royal blue crystal threaded with veins of what looked like grey metal. The Asgard scientists had excitedly claimed that it seemed to emit a similar exotic energy field to his own and they had used samples of his creation to create the field interaction devices.

What the Asgard scientists couldn't tell him was what it did. Harry himself only had a vague idea of what the block truly was and it was a concept that he couldn't quite put into words. It was an item of great power he knew, but that wasn't all it was or even the item's most important trait. Until he figured out just what it was Harry decided to usethe bock as a paper weight, worry stone and a toy for his pet fairy-cats Peorth and Freyr.

He might not have been so apathetic had he realized just how powerful the object in the palm of his hand really was. As things stood it was a time of his life that he would later look back on with a shudder. And as he held the block in his hand, images of galaxies floated within blue crystal planes for a time unnoticed.

Using the knowledge that they had gained, The Asgard scans had been modified to detect the exotic energy and as a result Heimdall and Hermiod made the discovery that several regions of the Earth had been covered with various fissures, some of which were continent-sized, that indicated that space had been folded, dimensionally-shifted or just plain cloaked in some way.

After careful comparisons of geological surveys, readings of the planetary mass and other experiments the Asgard had drawn comparisons between the cloaking fields on the planet and those of Asgard and Nox origin. These fields seemed to be ancient, and the particle decay rate indicated that some of them appeared to have predated the arrival of the Alterans on earth. The Asgard were fascinated and encrypted communications with Heimdall had resulted in instructions for Hermiod to gather data on the phenomena during their jaunt on earth to investigate the mysterious letters that had so flambouyantly been delivered to Harry.

Upon further investigation it was discovered that after being heavily shielded Asgard tech seemed to work with minimal difficulty when under limited exposure to exotic energy. The two technologies seemed to be largely incompatible though and Harry was busy researching ways of making thingswork. As part of that plan, Harry intended to discover as much as possible about this hidden side to his home-world. After rigorous testing of transporters and other equiptment Harry found himself confident that his modified Alteran personal defense shield would be able to handle sustained interactions with the energy field.

After several days of trying Hermiod eventually found what they were looking for in a primitive library database listing historical files detailing land surveys conducted by the British Crown during the reign of Henry VII between the years of 1490 and 1505. The files that Hermiod had looked at were a number of seemingly unrelated scans of historical documents performed independently by various historians working with Oxford, Cambridge and the Museum of London's Urban History Department.

The various files intimated the purchase and disappearance of property belonging to the Crown between the last survey in 1409 and the one conducted in 1500. The actual sale's record could not be found but Hermiod had discovered another file containing a few pages from the private diary of a London doctor by the name of J. Fortescue detailing a visit to a fine new eatery named the _Leaky Cauldron_, the only mention of the place written of the one of the letters Harry had received.

_"-ntrance located at the Leaky Cauldron where a representative shall await you on August the 14. Should you have difficulty locating the alley, please send us a reply by owl with your home address included..." _

With the addition of a few articles of clothing, weapons and a sub-dermal subspace transponder for security, Hermiod seemed willing if gruffly reluctant to explore the location that they had tentatively identified as being likely to be the Leaky Cauldrons location. Harry had a feeling that he would be able to spot the place with little difficulty. A few second later and they were off to the Leaky Cauldron.

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**AN: Reworked it a bit again and again. I tried to make the end a little smoother. Aside from the length and a few spelling errors I couldn't find anything wrong with it. The pace might be a little slow but I've already drawn up the outline for the next story arc. This one is going to be primarily centered on Harry and Earth. Let me know what you think. TTFN**


	5. Chapter 5

This story is a work of fanfiction and any similarities to the characters of any television, film or literary work is completely intentional. The author does not in any way shape or form profit from the following work nor claims any responsibility for the efforts of others. Said author acknowledges that they simply weren't cool enough to think of something like this on their own. The following story is a fanfiction cross over.

"Speech"

_"Thought/Alien Language"_

_-Sounds-_

**Freedom**

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**Ida Galaxy 1981 Earth/ Glitnir Year 153641 Othala **

Holographic projections gavfe the room an illusion of vastness that befitted the occasion. They were the High Council of the Asgard, the governing body of their race and they had convened a meeting in the Hall of Judgment.

The seven were arranged upon a raised tier overlooking the accused. The voices of the other Asgard watching, both in person and from ships spread across the galaxy, whispered through the air in a fast-paced language intended to comfortably and efficiently convey complex scientific concepts, a necessity in their technology oriented society.

The High Archon motioned for silence and when hall was quiet he spoke. _"Scientist Loki,"_ The being's androgynous voice called forth in his native tongue.

"_Formerly High Councilor for Asgard Sciences, you were dismissed from this position for gross incompetence and unethical practices that resulted in the permanent death of several of your subordinates. As part of your punishment you were commanded to remain within the domain of the Ida Galaxy and to cease all human experimentation pertaining to your xeno-biological study."_

The High Archon blinked his huge dark eyes and tilted his head before continuing in a grave voice. _"Instead of obeying this command we find that you have disregarded the injunction and broken your term of confinement, abducted and experimented on several sentient beings from various planets including some, not covered by our treaty with the Goa'uld and a disturbing number in violation of the non-interference pact."_

At an unseen signal from the High Archon, Supreme Commander Thor of the Asgard Military Forces continued in the position of a Polemarch, announcing the charges against the accused_. "Scientist Loki, we have examined the data recovered from your ship's travel log and, in spite of your attempts to destroy them, have recovered and reviewed evidence incriminating you in the following crimes."_

With a grim nod Thor spoke. _"You have been convicted of the abduction, illegal and unethical experimentation, cloning, and analysis of one hundred and twenty three Jaffa, one Oanne, 14 Orians, six Reol, 19 Sarrakens; more than 200 humans, one of whom appears to be an Alteran hybrid of Terran origin, two Terran Lapifors and one…" _

At this point the whispers had risen again and Thor gazed at Loki in exasperation before he finished blankly,_ "And one, Terran Bovine, into which, Bestla alone knows why, you saw fit to implant an anal probe."_

"_Serious as these charges are, your methodology has exposed the Asgard to a far more troubling issue."_ The High Archon continued.

"_You have knowingly broken the Protected Planets treaty by your actions against the Jaffa, not to mention the violation of the sovereign rights of several other races. Should the Goa'uld ever learn of what you have done we would be placed in a most difficult quandary. Our battle with the Replicators has made the task of enforcing the treaty against a large-scale Goa'uld incursion nearly imposible."_

Leaning slightly forward, Biflindi, High Archon of the Asgard questioned Loki softly. _"Have you anything to say in your defense?"_

Loki cleared his throat and thought furiously. He had already been judged guilty, the High Archon merely wished to see if there were any mitigating factors_. "My vessel really was hijacked by the rabbits."_ Loki began, _"They somehow caused a malfunction of my ship's transport systems."_

The jeers from the listening Asgard audience was like a deluge of rain, sudden and quickly dying away into whispers.

He gave the Asgard equivalent of a shrug_. "I was merely examining the beings that were transported aboard before returning them."_ Turning to Loki he pointedly said. _"And my interest in the bovine was strictly professional."_

"_A likely story."_ Thor muttered.

Unlike some advanced races like the Alterans and the Nox, Asgard law did permit the use of capital punishment for certain crimes like treason or murder. They would if necessary use varying forms of confinement or enforced service for most criminal acts however the punishment for murder or treason was always death.

Fortunately the Asgard as a society had matured far past the petty attachment to wealth and personal power, along with their attendant jealousies, inequalities and hatreds that led to crimes of passion, gain or hatred. The exceptions to the rule were dealt with by a comprehensive and technologically advanced crime prevention and investigation system. Successfully committing a crime and escaping justice was so difficult to do that over time the mindset of most would be villains had evolved to the point where few seldom went through with any of their plots.

As the Asgard grew older and wiser in the face of their galactic and eventually extra-galactic responsibilities, the criminal mindset seemed distastefully quaint. The genetic problem that was causing the extinction of their race had made such issues inconsequential in the eyes of Asgard society.

For the Asgard, every life lost was a life that could not be recovered by their race. Their negative population growth eventually made even the death penalty into an option of last resort. The Asgard would rather die as a race than become a race of monsters; still crimes which would have once earned Loki a death sentence instead earned him the collective scorn of all Asgard and an ignominious assignment under Sigyn for the next twenty decades.

Loki would be working in the one place that the High Council was reasonably sure that he could do minimal damage.

Waste disposal

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**Asgard designated Nursery- Thorri Year 153642 Hala**

Harry would always remember with great fondness his first Asgard toy. As far as toys go the moldable ovoid that Heimdall had excitedly given to him had at first seemed awfully dull. But its glossy silver surface was so smooth that he could see his own distorted reflection. The object was also warm to the touch like a living being and was especially pleasant to stick his fingers into.

Once in boredom he'd tried to chew on the toy and it had seemed to tremble and then flow out of his gagging mouth, turning into a silver pool that flowed across the clean nursery floor like spilled quicksilver before reforming some ways away humming chidingly.

It needn't have bothered with the reprimand, for Harry had absolutely no intention of ever putting something as horrid-tasting as that in his mouth ever again.

Unknown to Harry, the closest that Heimdall had ever come to childrearing was one 20,000 year old documentary on theoretical Asgard childcare that she forced Hermiod to watch. Heimdall's only other experience was with a number of Asgard studies on the development of human pediatrics that were performed sometime when Earth was going through the Dark Ages.

Fortunately even that abysmal qualification was significantly better than what another asgard like Loki or Thor would know about taking care of a child, any child. While most Asgard that worked to protect humans like Freyr and Thor, had an exceptional understanding of the optimal nutritional needs of a human and could produce the required food cube on command to efficiently administer these nutrients. It was extremely likely that Harry might have starved to death if subjected to their care for a prolonged period of time.

Babies could be fussy eaters.

Loki may have had better luck in keeping the child alive longer but only because he would have had no qualms about restraining the infant and surgically attaching a feeding tube.

The fifth time that Harry became fussy and refused to eat, Heimdall finally began to understand why. The genetic degradation of the Asgard genome had among other things, severely affected the Asgard's ability to taste food. In truth, even before the Asgard began to lose their sense of taste, the things that they ate and found delicious probably wouldn't have been very appealing to humans.

However, watching the young toddler screw up his face and stick out his delicate pink tongue, reminded Heimdall that the young of certain species possessed a sense of taste that was far more sensitive than the taste of adults. The next batch of vaccine-laced nutrient drink and enhanced, anti-viral soft food cubes may not have conveyed the necessary amount of nutrients in the most efficient manner, but they did begin to taste and smell faintly of goat's milk, honey, walnuts and fig.

After he first ate one of these meals, Harry thanked Hermiod.

He did it in Basic Asgard.

Not to be confused with Runlingi the Scientific language that Asgard adults spoke, Basic was a simple 'starter' Language taught to Asgard children and was based on a fairly simple, by Asgard standards, phonetic system consisting of 75 tonal phonemes, 115 phonemes and 19 free variables.

An Earth linguist might have, after some exposure to the language, recognized that Basic Asgard was a fairly complex version of Old West Norse. In truth the language that Thor's people had taught to the early Vikings was actually a type of baby-speak.

The simple "Thank You;" that Harry had spoken was actually one of the simplest words in Basic that his physiology allowed him to say and in and of itself not that amazing. After-all, at the same age, young Dudley Dursley a galaxy away in Little Whinging, Surrey, England had already broken the Guinness World Record for the longest, loudest and brattiest utterance made in a single breath in the English language with his famous, "I don't- WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The only thing impressive about Harry's expression of thanks was the fact that the child had only had one opportunity to be exposed to Basic. And that was the one time that Hermiod had used the Asgard child-care documentary to but the boy to sleep.

He had learnt the basics of an alien language after less than an hour of exposure while drowsy.

That was when Heimdall had decided to give Harry the learning module.

The learning module was once a popular children's toy among the Asgard, it possessed a primitive, by Asgard standards, artificial intelligence programmed to be companion, watchdog, learning tool, communicator, babysitter; a great-tasting, nontoxic, edible chew-toy and an entertainment device containing some two hundred and sixty thousand, five hundred and fifty-one games, stories, audio-visual programs and songs that were continually updated.

After discovering that Asgard children had a rather radical idea of what tasted good, Harry was staring a bit warily at the silver egg-like object when a piece of it rolled off. A spherical drop simply separated from the main body and rolled away in a path that drew a flat helical spiral in glowing silver light that slowly faded.

A second silver ball separated from the ovoid and rolled into Harry's waiting hands. The young boy tilted his head to one side before rolling the ball in a perfect circle. The first ball rolled up to Harry and drew a line, passing through the center of the circle, intersecting the perimeter twice. The two balls then began rolling on their own, showing Harry how many times the chord through the middle of the circle needed to be drawn so as to completely enclose the perimeter.

Harry helped to draw several other two dimensional shapes, and watched as the rolling droplets drew a few shapes that he, and most other human's in the universe, didn't know **could** be drawn in two dimensions. Using visual cues the silver balls extruded from the ovoid, explained in elementary terms and geometric shapes in an intuitive fashion.

In this was over the years Harry learned of runes, he learned that in some dimensions of thought pi was not a transcendental number and how, by proving in which spatial dimensions it was, Harry discovered an elementary way of determining whether or not a number was indeed a transcendental.

By doing so, he unknowingly rediscovered an elementary solution to what mathematicians on Earth referred to as Fermat's Last Theorem. He did so at two years old, ten years before much older mathematicians on Earth would discover their own proof in a far more dubious and convoluted fashion.

The truth of the situation was that the device given to Harry by Heimdall was designed to be a supplementary educational tool. It constantly and subtly tested it's charge's cognitive abilities and in doing so molded it's lessons to suit the abilities of it's user. Had Harry been simply an ordinary human boy of comparative age, then the module would have become a set of squeaky building blocks.

As it was, by the time Harry was three, the ovoid was morphing in three-dimensional fractal patterns simulating the dissipation pattern of Cherenkov radiation from a hyperspatial aperture and drawing the relevant equations in light for Harry to solve through mental calculations in order to prevent the aperture's collapse.

And Harry understood just how to do so…

Impressive as it was, the module was not the only source of Harry's education or even his primary educator. That responsibility fell to Hermiod.

"The learning module serves to stimulate those areas of your brain associated with cognitive thought. As an Alteran, your cerebral physiology is far more advanced than that of a human's, your closest genetic comparison, unfortunately." Hermiod said didactically, blinking his large dark eyes once he continued. "As a result, I see no reason why we should not take advantage of your capacity for learning and expand your education suitably."

And so Hermiod began teaching Harry advanced concepts of what the module had been teaching him using far more complex terms. He also taught Harry astrophysics, hyper-spatial physics, what the Asgard knew of sub-space mechanics, medicine, programming logic, engineering, base eight Calculus and languages, at least the few languages that Hermiod could fluently speak, which numbered a measly thousand or so.

A typical session would begin with Hermiod and Harry sitting across from each other at a desk in one of the research labs.

Hermiod would start the language lesson by politely saying. "Griàßdi nachà." - _"Good Morning."_

And Harry would greet Hermiod in turn with. "Ave." - _"Greetings."_

"B'Jkhgsu-haia4 jah Ill?" Hermiod would ask to test Harry's understanding of Reol.

And Harry would reply in the same language saying, "Yt'tra hyyb leki."

They'd ramble on in one language or another before Hermiod invariably made a snide remark, usually involving a jab at Harry's intellect.

"Kama di en Sol?" Hermiod would ask sarcastically.

"?Bxxët zxàßxt?" Harry would cheekily answer.

Which would cause Hermiod exclaim in exasperation, "Mo ming qi miao!"

"Sri fu Vraaden," Harry would explain before asking, "Dong le ma?"

And with a stern look Hermiod would fire back in Old German, to which Harry would squeal "Kree!" in Goa'uld, something he knew Hermiod hated and would cause his grey caretaker to curse childishly in Runlingi.

Although Runlingi was language that Harry couldn't speak, that didn't stop him from understanding and obtaining a large vocabulary of obscure Asgard curses. Heimdall would inevitably discover what Hermiod had done and in their next meeting, would drag off the hapless scientist to watch another Asgard child-care documentary.

As a further result, Harry was left with more time to play with the module.

The same thing would happen in any other class that Harry felt was boring…

By the time he turned four, Harry discovered the toy's ability to create small objects of increasing complexity once it had been given the necessary materials, equations and logical algorithms for constructing these devices.

The first thing that Harry built was a minuature galaxy that looked like a violet sunflower with twisted spiraling petals. There were real clusters of miniature stars and nebulae in the center and wide rotating petals of star-matter and pulsars with dots of light from a billion suns floating in the dark all contained within an invisible field of energy.

Watching it made Harry feel strangely wistful….

It was also one of the things that the module had never been programmed to create.

Ignorant of this inconsistency, Harry progressed even further in his self-study in creating sub-dimensional, extra-dimensional and hyper-spatial structures. Each time he worked on adding something more to his creation, heeding the urgings of silent whispers in his mind until eventually he created The Cube.

Or at least something that looked like a cube from a three-dimensional perspective.

The Cube was, well Harry didn't know just what the Cube was. It was as magical as the galaxy Harry had originally created. His caretakers had been aware that Harry at times displayed skills and abilities usually associated with the Alterans in their later years. Once Hermiod had been levitated through the air by an excited two year old Harry and another time the boy had teleported into the wilderness of Hala in order to escape another lecture from Hermiod.

After Heimdall and Hermiod had recovered from their shock, the two Asgard had hurriedly tracked Harry down, finding him in the company of two wild skogkatter, a non-native, mammalian species of feline. When Hermiod tried to scold Harry the recalcitrant child inadvertently caused the scientist to be colored a most fetching shade of powder blue that didn't fade for months.

It was obvious that by then, many Asgard scientists were clamoring for the opportunity to examine the Alteran hybrid. The High Council had placed an injunction on such studies and on Thor's orders Heimdall had used Asgard technology to place a gene lock on Harry's DNA preventing the artificial alteration or creation of clones from Harry.

Heimdall only performed the most discreet of studies and experiments, primarily cataloguing Harry's developing abilities and passively scanning him to study the way he did the things that he could do. She never really understood that what she was searching for could not be completely explained by science, Asgard science that is.

However, what they did discover gave them hope.

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**Asgard High Council Chamber- ****Góa**** Year 153644 Hala**

Thor was silently contemplating what had been learnt, along with the rest of the High council. The murmuring of the thousands of Asgard viewing the meeting in person and from off-world was a constant presence in the background.

"_Are you certain of this?" _Freyr asked in their native tongue.

"_Yes the sensors were conclusive in their analysis of the energy field."_ Hiemdall replied excitedly.

"_Can we produce this field ourselves?"_ Asked Penegal.

"_From what we have been able to determine, this is field seems to only be produced by the Alteran using some physiological mechanism that I do not understand and have been unable to isolate and study, the only exception to this limitation are the residual fields generated by items that have been created within the field."_ Heimdall answered. _"However,"_ she added, _"Such items tend to lose their molecular cohesion as the field fades over time."_

"_Besides the potential uses of this discovery I am more intrigued by the effects of this field on Kiron particles."_ Thor stated.

"_The child's exotic energy field seems to be able to interfere with the stability of the reactive modulating mono-polar energy field used in replicator constructs."_ Heimdall lectured.

Freyr leaned forward and asked, _"Can this field be artificially induced."_

Heimdall shook her head as she answered. _"We don't know enough about how the field functions to reproduce it artificially. The Alteran Hybrid has provided us with a substance capable of creating a similar field but the range of it is woefully small."_

"_If we can find a way to boost the field strength then this would be the first effective counter measure against the Replicators."_ Ur commented. _"What says the Alteran?"_

Heimdall shuffled through her report before answering. _"We have done our best to shield him from the realities of our war, though it seems that he has obviously deduced something from our actions if he created something like this. Still I would prefer not approach him until he is old enough to understand."_

The Hugh Council conferred in private until Biflindi proclaimed the council's wish.

"_You will tell the Hybrid the truth of our situation and ask him for what aid he may provide."_ The High Archon said.

"_I must object to involving a child in our war!"_ Heimdall exclaimed.

"_Your objection is noted and dismissed,"_ the High Archon replied. _"Ours is a war for survival and the Alteran may hold the key, do as we command." _

For security purposes Heimdall Hermiod and Harry were moved to a remote protected planet in the Avalon Galaxy where Heimdall worked with young Harry for two years to create a pluon emitter that produced an imperfect field that used inductance to mimic the energy field around Harry's crystal cube but over a far larger area. The weapon was installed on Asgard ships as an internal security counter-measure that served to slow or completely stop the encroachment of the replicators.

It was not the perfect result that the councils had hoped for, but it served to buy the Asgard precious time to deal with the threat.

At age seven, Harry took a vacation in Cimmeria.

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**London 1985**

Sirius did important five things immediately after being freed. After he shook off Albus Dumbledore's woeful inquiries into his state of being and promised to meet with Remus at a later date. He went into Gringotts and withdrew a sizeable amount of galleons. Then Sirius trooped into the nearby Leaky Cauldron, dirty as a mudpuppy. He walked up to a stammering Tom and ignored the random screams of, "_It's Sirius Black!_" coming from various uninformed patrons as he ordered a room for a few nights.

Sirius was lead by an anxious Tom to a private booth where he awaited a meal provided by the Leaky Cauldron's kitchen staff, a band of timorous house elves that were at once overjoyed by the titanic order and terrified by the person they were serving it to.

The first important thing that Sirius Black did was eat.

He ate roast beef with roasted potatoes, vegetables and Yorkshire pudding. He ate Bangers and mash, with stewed black beans, bread and cheese with tarts covered in rhubarb and mandarin marmalade. He devoured an entire shepherd's pie with a side of lamb and a tankard of ale. He ate generous slice of cottage pie with beef, a fisherman's pie of trout, herring and oysters with fried mushrooms covered in a spicy, mango chutney. He finished it off with a basket of cool pork pies, toads in a hole and washed it all down with a Mugwump-sized triple-chocolate fudge, everything-on-it pineapple sundae brought over from Florean Fortescue's.

Then he got to the main course.

A side of a turkey and a leg of ham, covered in sweet masala pumpkin chutney and great dollops of butter respectively, was served on huge platters with heaps of eggs, blood pudding, bowls of kedgeree with sour cream and olives; a roasted and stuffed, spotted duck, sherry trifle, a bottle of fire whiskey, bakewell pudding, rhubarb, mango, strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, apricot, apple and custard pies with welsh rabbit and shortcake for dessert.

He ate and ate in a ravenously decadent manner, only pacing himself after he accidentally bit a squealing house elf that came to place a tray on the sagging table and couldn't get her hand out of the way in time. He caught himself licking the arm contemplatively before being distracted by the arrival of even more food. Grapes and orange sherbet, fresh strawberries, sliced melon and carrot sticks. Everything on the menu indeed!

Then, he drank some tea, Assam, strong with no sugar.

The second important thing that Sirius Black did was take a bath.

The first wash came out a solid black color from the filth that had accumulated on his body, the second and third were the same. He kept the traumatized elves busy drawing baths for him until the vanished water was only a uniform tan in color filled with dead bugs and other parasites that had died when he treated his hair and body with cleansing potions ordered from his room. His extra efforts were rewarded when as predicted by James a certain sympathetic Auror dropped by to see how he was doing and help him shave…

Among other things…

He had spent nearly five years in a dark cell without any women after all.

His crazy cousin sooo did not count.

The third most important thing that Sirius did was ask about Harry.

He regretted not doing so sooner.

Once the euphoria of freedom had faded slightly and the thoroughly tousled, female Auror had left. Sirius placed a floo call to Remus asking for a meeting with Harry. Since Sirius had been under the effects of veritaserum and drugged into a semi-conscious state he hadn't been aware of the primary thrust of his questioning before the Wizengamot.

So when the security of his godson Harry came up in conversation with Remus, the werewolf had nervously asked permission to floo over and talk to him in person.

He got the story out of Lupin bit by bit. After meeting Hagrid at the house Sirius had rushed off after Pettigrew trusting Hagrid with the non-existent baby that he thought the man had rescued. In truth Hagrid hadn't found any trace of Harry and Sirius had merely mistaken he man's distraught blubbering as orders from Dumbledore to not reveal the whereabouts of the child.

In truth, Harry was gone by the time that anyone from the Order got there.

Pettigrew was free, out there somewhere laughing at him…

The fourth important thing that Sirius did was rage.

Being the eldest son of Walburga Black made Sirius well versed in incoherent rages along with their impotent, insane and incendiary subtypes in general. Being Sirius Black made him especially well versed in Walburga's incendiary rages in particular. At the time that he thought he knew of Harry's fate, Sirius black cut loose, it was fortunate that he didn't have a wand.

He raged at the world, at Dumbledore, at himself.

Remus had barely cast a silencing charm on the room and retreated out the door when an alarm clock, a small table, a footstool and several large gouts of wandlessly conjured flame smashed against the door. He shattered a shrieking mirror, ripped apart his bed sheets and playacted Peter's murder using several conjured pillows and one unfortunate house-elf that had popped in to see if he wanted more food. The creature escaped without injury after Sirius had treated it to an exceedingly descriptive dialogue of just how terrible the suffering of Pettigrew, the man that had betrayed the Potters to their death, would be.

Again the Leaky cauldron's house-elves had cause to be pleased with and terrified of Sirius Black.

House elves could be surprisingly vicious when they want to be…

By the time that Remus returned and was dreadfully surprised **(1)** by the cheerful greeting from the specter of James Potter, Sirius had turned to the fifth important and perhaps most important thing that he did since gaining freedom.

He thought.

Sirius Black was a clever, brave and active man with a modest fortune of his own and an even larger one newly inherited. Out of the five important things that he did that day, sitting and thinking was by far the most dangerous thing he had done.

Dangerous for anyone who claimed to eat death…

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A day later Sirius found himself in a private Gringotts conference room going over his personal accounts and the Black family account with the aid of Remus Lupin. As the oldest son and the one assigned by his mother as the official family heir, Sirius Black found himself in charge of considerable assets. His Great Uncle Alphard Black had bequeathed to Sirius 60 thousand galleons as well as his house and certain other items of the elderly man's possessions.

Sirius himself had not worked a day in his life, choosing instead to become a full-time member of the Order of the Phoenix. While Sirius held little ill regard for the members of the Order. his time in prison had left him disillusioned and needful of freedom and independence. He also felt strongly that those Death Eaters who had escaped justice deserved to pay for their crimes.

"And they will." Sirius muttered.

Remus looked up from some papers he had been looking over. Even distracted, his acute hearing allowed him to detect Sirius' mutter and understand the tone, if not the content of the sour mumbling.

"Leave it to the Aurors Sirius," he said. "Everything is still up in the air in England, even now, five years later. The Order has disbanded as there's been no trace of Voldemort in the country." The werewolf ran a tired hand through his graying hair. "Dumbledore doesn't think he's gone though; there have been rumors that he's hidden out somewhere in Eastern Europe, but for now Sirius lets focus on you."

"Yes, let's do that." Sirius agreed, though he wore a grim look that made it plain for all to see that he hadn't really given up on his line of thought.

Remus noticed the look but chose to let it go, instead sending furtive glances at the apparition of James floating behind Sirius. There was something about the apparition that seemed different than that of a normal ghost. If Remus had to put things into words he would say that it was as if James had a different scent compared to that of other ghosts he had met. Only ghosts didn't have smells, and James seemed to exude a scent similar to the air during a lightning storm. _Odd…_

Remus forgot about his questions as he tried to make sense of the financial statements that he was reading.

For his part, James was helping Sirius read over the financial statements for the House of Black.

"_You own a castle!"_ James exclaimed.

"I own a castle?" Sirius repeated blankly.

"_Correction, you own three castles,"_ James said, reading further down the scroll hovering before him. _"Three castles, seven mansions, sixteen town-houses, twenty-three beach houses, five villas, a section of the Black Forest in Albania and a deserted island in the Bermuda Triangle Wizarding Retirement Community."_

"Wait, I own a castle?" Sirius repeated again, with a slow grin spreading across his face.

"You also own diamond, gold and gemstone mines in Africa, Australia, Brazil and Madagascar. Your family also has shares in mines in the U.S., U.K. and Canada." Remus murmured with eyes scanning the papers.

"Since when did we own mines?!" Sirius exclaimed.

"Since always apparently," Remus replied. "From the looks of these account ledgers, all but a few are mined out and closed. There have also been no new surveys performed in the last sixty years."

"_That's probably why your army is protecting those gold mines in Namibia."_ James mused, causing Sirius to roar in surprise.

"**I have an ARMY!!!"**

At that exclamation, Remus finally realized that Sirius hadn't been talking to him, but to James.

Shaken free of his preoccupation the werewolf asked, "You have an army?"

Because he knew Sirius, Remus simply skipped ahead in the conversation and said preemptively, "Don't do it."

Sirius wrinkled his nose for Remus' tone seemed to imply that _**he**_ having a private army was probably a bad thing. For a second Sirius paused in thought, his face gaining a dark smirk before snatching the scroll that James was reading from out of the air. After a moment, Sirius inked a quill and began to write down information on a blank piece of parchment, all the while chuckling darkly.

Had he looked up he would have noticed his friends share a look that matched Remus' earlier tone.

As Sirius wrote he pondered the state of his family. For the most part, Sirius was all that was left of the male line of the Black Family and the next closest inheritor was Draco Malfoy, from the matrilineal line. Sirius resolved to put plans in place in the likely event that Malfoy Sr. attempted to 'hurry along' the line of succession, perhaps he'd arrange to donate his wealth to charity and give a castle or two to Remus. Those things tended to have large dungeons.

Still he hadn't known just how rich his family really was. Glancing aside at the account summary on the conference table, he gazed again at the summary of his family's Gringotts England vault.

**Vault Title Holder: Lord Sirius Orion Black**

……………**.**

……………**..**

**Net Balance: 7,654,544 Galleons, 1,456,333 Sickles, 976, 445 Knuts**

It was a lot of money, more that he remembered gleaning from his father's ledger in the past, Sirius' gaze passed over another sheaf of documents and froze as his gaze fixed upon a name.

Edgar Bones.

As he read on Sirius discovered that the Black Family had provided Mr. Bones with money and property necessary to start up a business. They had been co-investors in a store that sold small charmed items, including a type of self-inking quill with a proprietary anti-cheating charm that the ICW was interested in acquiring for use in O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. examinations. Things were going well for Edgar Bones according to the documents.

Until he and his wife and children were killed by Death Eaters.

It took calling on Remus and James to help him make sense of the information in the dossiers before him, but slowly, with growing horror he came to the chilling realization of his family's culpability in the death of Edgar Bones.

Sadly he was not surprised.

The motivation was two fold and summarized by James and Remus as thus.

"_They owned the building, and to a degree had partial title to the company's work_." The ghost said.

"_But Edgar claimed that the quills were based off of designs predating the investment and that none of the money was used on that project. The Blacks felt cheated and Walburga saw herself the part owner of a worthless trinket store."_ James grinned grimly.

"_The Blacks had properties but their liquid wealth was dwindling, that's why they owned all those castles that hadn't been lived in for years. They couldn't afford to sell family assets, as that would announce to the world that they no longer had the money to pay for the upkeep of their property. But they didn't want to go broke and lose their status and wealth to debtors."_ James paused as he thought about the lengths that people would go, **had gone** to maintain their position in society.

"So they had him and his closest relatives killed." Remus continued. "They knew that with a Death Eater attack, people would suspect that it was a reprisal against Amelia." The man looked haunted as he continued.

"They claimed ownership of the quill in the confusion, and then kept the business open, using it to launder Death Eater funds." Remus shuddered as he concluded. "The worse part is, this wasn't the only time!" Gesturing to the other files in the foot tall stack Remus finished by saying in disgust. "The House of Black killed off the wealthier families that opposed You-Know-Who and claimed their wealth as next of kin…Disgusting!"

Sirius ended the tense silence that followed by slapping his hands together. "First thing we need to do." He said, "We need to settle the fact that there are a lot of Death Eaters and their supporters running around free while there are families hurting, orphaned children and terrorized people who all need help."

"Sirius, the ministry doesn't need any vigilante justice." Remus remarked.

"_That's not what you're thinking, is it?"_ James asked Sirius.

"No." Sirius replied, he picked up a copy of the daily prophet and tapped an article detailing rumors that Undersecretary Fudge was thinking of running for Minister for Magic in the wake of calls for a vote of no confidence in Minister Bagnold. In the background of the picture, behind a smiling Cornelius Fudge were a very nervous looking Lucius Malfoy, a grim Theodoric Nott and a preening Belladonna Zambini.

"Death Eaters…" Sirius muttered, "And their supporters, trying to buy their way out of prison while the innocent suffer, well not any more."

"We're going to kill two birds with one stone." Sirius sighed.

Remus seemed curious, "And how are we going to do that?"

Sirius smirked. "It's been brought to my attention that I have too much damn money…"

A few months later a company called Marauder Private Investigations and the non profit NGO, Lily Evans-Potter Mercy Foundation came into being and began to do their part to bring peace to the Wizarding world in two radically different ways.

It was only the beginning...

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**The Distant Future**

Harry wasn't any less intelligent than his celebrated wives, nor was he any more intelligent. The problem was that they had the advantage of numbers when it came to managing him, their husband. He'd long ago stopped wondering just how he'd wound up married to such capable women, such intelligent and beautiful women. He merely kept an open mind and hoped that they didn't destroy the universe with their excessive tinkering.

Again…

Still as he walked through what had to be temporally and spatially adjusted corridors, he wondered, as he got directions from his future self; the third version of himself that he'd bumped into no less. He wondered as up became down; and left became right; and light became darkness as darkness became light.

He truly wandered, if the friendship between his three wives was doing any good for his sanity…

He kept his mind open and when he got to the bridge of their ship, he gave each of his wives a kiss, and made mental note to give himself directions on the way out.

Women…

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**(1) When Prongs spooked Moony**

"H-h-h-h-"

There was a cold pit in Remus' chest that set his heart thundering in his ears.

"Ha-he-hea-head!!!"

The cause was the rotating head that had materialized in the center of his chest and was grinning at him.

_"What's up Moony?"_

"Prongs?"

_"Better believe it!"_

"Hiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee!!"

--Thump-

Sirius came out into the hallway and stared at James and Remus.

"What happened?' He asked James.

_"I dunno, must be stressed, took one look at me and he fainted."_ James replied.

Sirius blinked, "Wait, he can see you!"

_"Yup!"_ James nodded.

"Then I'm not crazy?" Sirius asked doubtfully.

_"No more than when you went to jail for mass murder."_ Came James reply.

"Well whaddya know? I'm sane!" Sirius Black muttered, before grabbing Lupins legs and dragging his limp body into his room. A hag coming up the stairs changed her mind at the sight and decided to return to the safety of the common room.

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**AN: I have great expectations for this story but I need to take some time to look over my plot and see where I can improve on things. I've found that giving myself time to properly write at my own pace produces a better result than just knocking something out in a day or two, even if it means walking away from the story for a month. For those interested I'll be putting up a new God of Flash chapter in a few days. TTFN**


	6. Chapter 6

**This story is a work of fanfiction and any similarities to the characters of any television, film or literary work is completely intentional. The author does not in any way shape or form profit from the following work nor claims any responsibility for the efforts of others. Said author acknowledges that they simply weren't cool enough to think of something like this on their own. The following story is a fanfiction cross-over. **

**The Raven**

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Leaky Cauldron 1991

Many people over the years had remarked on how changed Severus Snape appeared to be. Granted his hair was still somewhat sleek from exposure to the fumes of the various potions that he made for a living. He still walked with a somewhat intimidating and dignified air to his presence, and his lips still thinned at the merest mention of the word werewolf.

It could not be denied however that something about Hogwarts Potions Professor and part-time apothecary Severus Snape was different. Perhaps it was the fact that there was a certain bitterness absent from his glare or it might be the fact that the aura of quiet dignity that surrounded him held more an air of faint sadness than constrained hostility. It might be the fact that in everything he did and said from lecturing a bumbling student to conversing with fellow professors, there was a sense of serenity to his actions.

It was a sense of serenity that had carried him through the Death Eater trials where he was acquitted on the discreet word of Albus Dumbledore, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. It was a sense of serenity that allowed him to tolerate the less than brilliant but business savvy former student of his Adleberg Gamp, when the young man suggested opening an owl order apothecary store in partnership with a few other Slytherin and Ravenclaw graduates.

It was a sense of serenity that had served him well through nine separate investigations of dark arts activity by Marauder Investigations and the at times belligerent conversations with one Sirius Black. Through all of the trials that he had lived through following the fall of Lord Voldemort the sense of serenity that had pervaded Severus Snapes life stemmed from a simple, faded red ribbon that tied his limp hair into a loose ponytail.

It was one of the last gifts that he had given to Lily Evans before the disastrous end of their friendship. It was also the one piece of proof that he had that he hadn't been completely delusional that night when her apparition had appeared to him and shattered his world view. The red ribbon was an assurance that the calming presence that he felt supporting him during the toughest moments of his life was not a figment of his grieving imagination.

It was the symbol of a promise that he made that night, one he intended to keep.

A promise that could only end with the downfall of Voldemort…

So Severus Snape had merely nodded serenely when he was told to meet a certain student at the Leaky Cauldron and he had accepted it in stride when he learned that the person he would be waiting with was a highly suspicious Sirius Black. When the raven haired boy entered through the muggle street entrance of the tavern, he took in the child's strong resemblance to a young James Potter and focused on the green eyes that reminded him of the woman he had loved.

After a moment of hesitation he stepped forward and spoke.

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Earth 1985-1989

Siruis gave a third of his liquid wealth to the creation of Marauder Investigations and a third to the Lily Evans Potter Mercy Foundation. After consultation with the Bones Family, it was decided that all future royalties from the exam quill would got to the Mercy Foundation which was quickly earning a reputation for giving aid to those families and orphaned children, magical and non-magical that had been ravaged by the terrorist activities of Voldemort and his Death Eaters.

If things had been left to Sirius he would have happily spent every last penny that he had on tracking down and capturing every last Death Eater that he could find. Already his employees were in the trail of the Carrows and digging into the illicit affairs of other families that had supported Lord Voldemort. The documents listing the chain of stolen wealth gave them places to look into and Sirius was fanatically determined to hunt down every last person involved in those crimes.

Fortunately Remus and James came up with a much better idea of how to finance this goal and it was one that Sirius liked very much. He particularly the part of the plan where his mother's painting wound up spending a month screeching alone in his family's vault.

In addition to donating more than ten million pounds to the Mercy Foundation Sirius had also allowed the foundation the use of one of his family's town houses as an orphanage, it was located in the village of Hampstead on the outskirts of London.

Having taken a look at his other property holdings Remus and James suggested that Sirius refurbish and use various property holdings to earn an income. The first of these holdings to be thus refurbished was a pair of Mansions located in Greenwich and a town house in St. Ives. With the aid of his cousin Andromeda Tonks and her family, Sirius was able to hire a number of caretakers, most of them squibs with knowledge of the muggle world as well as retaining the aid of his cousin's family who oversaw the refurbishment efforts with Remus and lived in one of the town houses as caretakers while Andy's husband Ted, went to a muggle school to study law.

Doxies, bundimuns and vampire mosps were violently evicted and exterminated from the houses, while the clabbert and lawn gnome populations of the grounds were dealt with by being relocated to one of the undeveloped properties owned by the Black family. A hive of fairies in the St. Ives Town house property was convinced to relocate to the gardens of one of the Greenwich Mansions after a full day of shameless flattery by Sirius, being given samples of the flowers grown at the mansion by Remus and the promise of many future admirers from Andromeda.

What they had planned only became aparent after the all obviously magical artifacts had been removed from the Mansion overlooking the Thames river. The town council of Greenwich had been trying for years to either tear down the eyesore, a state only partially the fault of muggle repelling charms, or claim ownership for failure to maintain the upkeep of the manor as a historic building, a measure that failed due to the same muggle repelling charms.

The refurbishment of the manor into a Hotel built keeping intact the Victorian style architecture by the heretofore unknown Wolfstag Enterprises was a boon to the local town council both in prospective jobs and the payment of outstanding land taxes. The Wolf and Stag resort hotel quickly became a popular retreat for the wealthy and well to do. As its rates were such that a the middle class family or even a group of travelers could afford a few nights stay, the mansion and its out door facilities which included a modern Olympic sized pool, tennis court, a nine hole golf course and an in-house restaurant that opened out into the gardens at night affording visitors a spectacular view of the river.

The only difference between the hilltop Hotel overlooking the river and the one built overlooking Greenwich Park was the fact that the Greenwich Park Hotel catered to those in the know about magic be they pureblood or muggle-born; the fact that the house-elves who managed the grounds and kitchens had no need to hide the extent of their magic usage; the cloud of fairies that illuminated the gardens at night to the delight of the Hotels guests and the replacement of the nine hole golf course with a lowflying quidditch pitch.

Sirius broke even on both hotels by the end of the year in 1986 and by 1987 managed to completely pay off the highly cut-throat loan that he had used to help finance the enterprise. Both hotels became highly profitable retreats for the wealthy.

On the muggle side of things, those in the business world saw it as a chance for themselves and their families to rub shoulders with the rich and famous for an evening or weekend while they talked business and generally felt important. On the Wizarding side of the operation The Wolf and Stag Greenwich Park restaurant served as an excellent location for private meetings among ICW and Wizengamot members over lunch. The wide antechamber floo that opened into the hotel lobby also saw the presence of many magical foreign dignitaries and well to do families who wanted something more than the Leaky Cauldron as a place to stay while in England.

The Daily Prophet denigrated Sirius as belittling the name of the House of Black even as he ran full page advertisements in both the magical and muggle media. But in the end the combined media exposure, both good and bad ensured high profit margins for the new business. Profits that went into the establishment of a chain of five Wolf and Stag Hotels as well as a number of seaside and in-city town houses both magical and non-magical that served as bed and breakfast inns throughout Great Britain.

Other villas in France and Italy became exclusive, word of mouth only, holiday rentals. By the end of 1988 Sirius had quintupled his net worth and done so in a manner that thumbed his nose at centuries of his family's disdain for muggles and the muggle-born. He took great pleasure in spending every odd evening wearing earplugs as he regaled his mother with tales of just how many muggles passed though one of their former ancestral homes.

Perhaps Sirius' fondest enterprise was the construction Grimmalds in March of1990. Perhaps that was because it all began in early 1990 with this conversation…

"Blood traitor! Mudblood lover! How dare you bring that, that, _thing _into the Noble House of Black!" The painting screeched as it saw Sirius and Remus come into view. The outburst drew Kreacher the family house elf out of hiding to glare at Remus suspiciously.

"Now mother," Sirius spoke with a tone of uncharacteristic, sarcasm-less, sweetness. "That's not the way to greet guests. Besides I've got good news for you and Kreacher."

Walburga's painting was guarded as it waited for Sirius to continue.

Sirius acted like he was floating on air as a troop of house-elves popped into the mansion and began removing items from the house. They tore down and removed the family tapestry, violently killing hosts of screaming doxies. They stripped away the table cloths and warily levitated suspicious looking artifacts into a large cloth bag. With a strangled cry Kreacher popped away and he could be heard arguing with the house-elves working in the kitchens.

Ignoring Walburga's outraged cries as the elves began removing other paintings from the house; Sirius strode into the kitchen where he found Kreacher dueling with a pair of house elves with a soup ladle in one hand and a butcher's knife in another.

"Kreacher!" He barked, distracting the crazed elf log enough for him to be disarmed and wrestled to the ground.

Kneeling down with a slight wince of pain, he looked at the miserable elf and he found the apparition of James sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him. He listened to the apparitions whispered advice and swallowed his loathing for the creature long enough to speak.

"Kreacher, I am relocating the Black Family home to one of our older holdings, a castle that we have long been unable to afford to upkeep until recently. Do you understand? I'm moving the family items to a vault until we can finish refurbishing the place."

The house-elf stared distrustfully at him and muttered to himself, "Kreacher not believe nasty master, filthy master is always yelling at the mistress, and breaking things."

Sirius swelled in outrage as the elf holding down Kreacher looked appalled at such disrespect.

A quelling look from James staunched Sirius' outburst long enough for him to choke out. "Well…these elves were here…to help with the, moving…I thought that you would help since you knew the place better that they did…but if you can't handle the work…"

Sirius got no further than that when with surprising strength Kreacher shook off the elf restraining him and leapt to his feet with such speed that Sirius fell onto his butt.

The old elf stared in Sirius' face with sudden intensity causing the wizard to worry, and then before Sirius could say another word Kreacher muttered lightly. "Perhaps filthy master not as bad as Kreacher thought."

Then without another word to the bemused man, Kreacher the house-elf took charge of the moving arrangements and reprimanded the dazed elf that had been holding him down for slacking off on working.

In another few hours Grimmauld place was bare save for five house elves, two wizards and one recalcitrant painting.

"What is this?! What are you up to?!" The painting raged.

"Why mother we are going to have you removed from this house." Sirius answered smoothly.

"Impossible!" His mother scoffed. "You can't remove me-" She began.

"Without demolishing this house, that's what you were going to say, yes Mother?" Sirius cut in.

Seeing the paintings shocked expression Sirius continued. "You had Kreacher fix your painting not to this wall but to the main support column of the house that passes behind it. A clever trick that puzzled me for a while, unfortunately you see I've used that trick before and it became obvious when I had a look at the blueprints for the house."

He stopped for a moment to savor the nervous look on his Mother's face before continuing. "You've probably cursed the pillar to collapse the moment that your painting was removed, but I don't care since I intend to demolish this vile building myself and build a mall in its place. No need to worry, we've put in place various support beams that'll keep the house standing until we leave, how do you like that?"

His answer was a single wary question from Walburga. "What is this _mall_ that you speak off?"

Personally Remus didn't approve of the way that Sirius had of raging at the enchanted canvas painting, he felt that his friend was investing far too much emotional energy in what was essentially a work of art enchanted to hold a handful of memories and a shadow personality of a dead person, in his opinion the painting denied Sirius closure and hurt his ears.

Perhaps it was the thing comment, but at Walburga's question Remus mildly remarked. "It's a large building or promenade where many hundreds of muggles gather to do muggle shopping, eat muggle food, play muggle games or simply loiter about with their muggle friends."

The resulting outburst was vociferous, verbose and vile. It ended only when Remus and Sirius cut away the painting, wall and pillar from the rest of the house and sent the whole mess away with the remaining house-elves and even then she was screaming up until the moment that the cringing elves popped away.

As they prepared to leave Sirius grinned at his guilty looking friend; "You might have mentioned that it was a Magical Mall that we were building" He chuckled.

The most ambitious part of James and Remus' plan had taken three years to get off of the ground. Ever since that day in Gringotts when James and Remus had first suggested that they start a business Sirius had thought they would be simply buying a house and turning it into an inn.

While he and James founded a detective agency and went about earning a name for themselves in both the magical and non-magical worlds, Remus and Andromeda Tonks found themselves managing a swiftly growing Hotel empire. Ted Tonks earned his law degree in late 1987 and soon found that he was working at managing the legal end of a swiftly growing business. For risk protection against litigation and bankruptcy claims; the Wolf and Stag Hotel chain became a limited liability subsidiary of the Wolfstag Development Company, which along with Marauder Investigations fell under the ownership of Black Holdings.

In the end, keeping track of all the legal details on in both the muggle and magical worlds meant that Ted Tonks eventually used his commissioned fees to start up a law firm in partnership with a wizarding solicitor and a squib barrister, forming the firm Boot, Radgest and Tonks. It was a firm that operated almost in symbiosis with Black Holdings and gave legal advice and other aid to Marauder Investigations.

While this was happening, the Pureblood families that had supported Death Eaters had thrown in their all into closing down Marauder Investigations activities which had pursued inquiries into their activities long after the bribery of various public officials had killed most ministry cases with a simple claim of, "Voldemort made me do it."

By the end of 1989 rumors of a number of plotted assassination attempts against Sirius Black were made public. But by then however, Sirius was only a figure head of Marauder investigations. He had been spending most of his time since 1988 buying the abandoned and run-down properties in and around the neighborhood of number twelve Grimmauld Place. The few muggle tenants were easily convinced to move with the more than generous compensation offered and by the Wolfstag Development Company.

There was a short-lived attempt to preserve some of the buildings in the area by a local historical society, unfortunately the members of that group of protesters happened across a hag trying to raise an erkling as an attack dog. The hysterical group was chased right into a group of muggle hooligans who promptly mugged the collection of elderly ladies and gents. They were all then apprehended by the Ministry of Magic's Obliviation squad and were left with an uneasy feeling whenever the Grimmauld issue was mentioned.

In the end very few people had anything to say when Sirius began demolishing abandoned homes and seedy warehouses with the goal of refurbishing the neighborhood.

Other than Rodulphus Lestrange.

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London 1989

Navin Bahl had very many good things to say about his boss. After five years working as a London taxi driver on the night shift, saying that he was desperate for a change in employment would have been an understatement. It wasn't that he hated his job per se, in a good year, by working two jobs he made quite enough to help support his family and parents through lean times.

Still, after that mess in '87 with that boy who went crazy and randomly started shooting people up near Hangleton, he had been robbed and beaten at gunpoint no less than five times in one year. He needed the job for his family but he needed to stay alive. So Navin had spent the weekend attending a free seminar being held by a retired police inspector on how to identify suspicious criminal activity on the street and survive a mugging.

It was there that he had met Mr. Black and held a conversation had lead to him being hired a Mr. Black's personal driver, it was a job that paid ridiculously better than the one he currently held and not only ensured that his eldest could continue school but supplemented his income to the point that his family lived comfortably. Mr. Black had been so impressed with Navin's memory, attention to detail and nose for trouble that he had sponsored Navin through a night school that taught investigative methods. Upon earning a private investigators license Navin Bahl had gone to work at Marauder Investigations and had never looked back.

Two years in and he still hadn't looked back. His mysterious boss, Mr. Black had apparently been wrongly imprisoned for murder years ago and upon regaining his freedom had spent his very considerable fortune on finding the true murderer. The staff of Marauder Investigations consisted of two investigators who at times disappeared on assignments given to them directly from the boss himself and four regular investigators including Navin who were paid a flat monthly fee in addition to a commission that depended on how quickly and efficiently they could complete a job for the office.

That meant keeping track of bills since with the exception of large expenses such as airfare which was provided by the company. The investigators paid for everything out of pocket and had to justify proper reimbursement from the office. Mr. Black and his even more mysterious partner Mr. Prongs, whom no-one at the office had ever met in person, had made a name for themselves by rescuing the kidnapped Graham Fletchly, the heir of a wealthy shipping magnate. They had earned the much publicized fifteen thousand pound reward and donated it to some charity.

With the publicity earned from solving a number of high profile cases, including locating an infamous gang of bank robbers for the police, and helping to prove how a reclusive novelist hired someone to kill his wife. Mr. Black at times involved himself in the more challenging cases and met with some of their stranger clients, like the elderly gentleman who walked into the office wearing a dress, but for the most part the regular Investigators were the ones who dealt with the various jealous husbands and wives that wanted to know whether or not their spouses were cheating on them, there was also the odd lost dog, missing cat and the few people who came to them thinking that they were the local constabulary.

Mr. Prongs kept track of all their cases via a log book in the main office that all investigators were required to fill. Every other fortnight either Mr. Black or a grey-haired Mr. Lupin would deliver orders written on parchment from Mr. Prongs. Sometimes it was advice on cases, at times a reprimand, or new directions on how to proceed on a certain case that Mr. Prongs was having an investigator do the leg work for him.

While Mr. Black and Mr. Lupin often disappeared at times, Mr. Prongs only ever acted through proxy, He took only the most baffling of cases such as a murder in a locked room type of case or one where the client claimed to have been stalked by someone. At times he accepted an embezzlement case or blackmail case where finding the identity of the culprit, time and discretion were paramount.

At times Mr Prongs assigned Navin or another investigator to do research on locating lost Egyptian artifacts that had gone missing from the London Museum or in Navin's case he had once been asked to go for a walk about Glastonbury Tor.

The other investigators were curious about the identity of the seemingly omniscient Mr. Prongs. When necessary some of the workers found emergency instructions left on the hood of their cars or outside of their houses. Miss Parker once claimed to have seen some sort of trained bird fly away after one such delivery like the one that Mr. Black kept as a pet in his office.

But that was ridiculous, Mr. Black kept an owl; people couldn't train owls to deliver mail!

In any case it was on the orders of Mr. Prongs that Navin Bahl found himself huddled in the shadow cast by some steps in the very type of neighborhood that he had taken this job to avoid working in. As he sat in the shadows he fervently wished that he had a gun. The criminals had guns, the criminals had lots of things that he didn't have but wished that he did. The former constable Grayson that worked in their office held a license to carry a firearm due to potentially hazardous work conditions. Most of the other investigators weren't as well connected and carried at best a truncheon or a loop of thick wire that could double as a knuckleduster.

Miss Parker kept a police whistle and a certain non-regulated device about six inches long that she fondly called her 'little snapper' and was prepared to use in ways and situations that Navin had no intention of discovering. As soon as Navin had read which neighborhood he would be spending the night in he quickly cast about for a means of defense. He was too short to use a Billy club for anything other than a groin shot. He wasn't willing to do five years for possessing a firearm without a license and the very concept of little snapper frightened him.

So in the end Navin had chosen to borrow Parkers whistle. As he watched, a ragged looking shadow detached itself from an alleyway and slinked across the street and into the decrepit looking building that Mr. Black had entered moments before. Bahl cast about for a payphone or police call box knowing that he would find none. He could have sworn that alley had held nothing more than a single mangy cat. Still, as he made his way over to number twelve Grimmauld Place, Navin Bahl felt cold comfort in the whistle poised at his lips.

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Eleven Months Before

It started with the oddest conversation of his life. Arthur Weasley from the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office had joined him in the elevator. Of course he knew Arthur and Molly from the Order, they just hadn't spoken to each other or been alone in each other's presence since before Sirius' arrest. James had said that Arthur was one of those cheering at his acquittal and that was enough of Sirius. Arthur had to care for a wife and seven children, he'd been passed over twice for promotion and after nearly twenty years of hard work had to kowtow to people like junior minister Fudge because of his politics, pro-muggle and muggle-born politics. Sirius understood if Arthur chose to keep his distance, the Weasley's were good people.

Remembering the Prewett twins Sirius had sent an extremely generous hamper to Molly during the anniversary of their death. It was too heavy to send by owl so he had a hose elf send the two meter wide basket with a plastic wash basin, filled with fresh new clothes. Hogwarts robes, with the Gryffindor crest, his older seventh year robes, some quidditch gear, a toy broom and doll, a serviceable Cleansweep, two hams, some preserved meats, a string of sausages, a wheel of cheese, a jar of honey treacle, strawberry jam, a bag of raisins and a bottle of fire whiskey. On top of the pile was an unsigned note, 'From one who understands loss, they shall stay cherished within our memory.'

A bag of gold would have been an insult.

He wasn't sure what gave him away but that Christmas he received a box of treacle fudge and his very own hand knitted shirt with his name on it. Arthur hadn't ever called him on it but the man did give him a nod whenever they passed each other in the halls.

Which was why this conversation was so bloody weird…

"H-how are you holding up Sirius?" Arthur asked quietly.

Curious but feeling amiable, Sirius replied with a short smile. "Never been better, Arthur, Molly's fine I hope?"

"Yes she is and she'll be happy to hear that you asked after her. I never did get to thank you about that tip on Malfoy Manor, Lucius looked apoplectic when we tore up that rug and found the trapdoor. I doubt that we got it all though." Arthur chuckled for a moment and Sirius smiled again.

"Err, Sirius, you might think this out of place but there were many of us who were horrified to learn that you had been wrongly imprisoned and happy to see you go free… I know that Molly worries about you, with all that's happened, please don't try to take him on by yourself." Arthur spoke delicately while looking at Sirius with a worried gaze.

Sirius blinked and was about to formulate a reply, probably to ask Arthur what the hell he was talking about, when the doors opened and Arthur hurriedly took his leave, ditching a bemused Sirius Black in the lift. His sense of confusion only increased at the guarded looks that he received from the Aurors on his way to the Office of the Director of Magical Law Enforcement.

Felt a bit like going to see the Headmaster really.

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That Evening

"Wow" Remus said.

"Yeah I know." Sirius replied.

"Wow!" Came Remus' eloquent reply, "Why do I get the feeling that you're taking this a bit too lightly? Are you just going to leave things up to the Aurors?"

"What?!" Sirius defended himself, "They caught me didn't they?"

"_You were innocent and not really trying to hide."_ James reminded the man.

"My point exactly! Just think of what they'd do to an actual criminal!" Sirius retorted.

"They said in the news that he had a newspaper cutting of your acquittal." Remus started in concern. "He scratched the word, 'kill' into the wall with his fingers until they bled. How'd he get that cutting? Do you think the Dea-"

"Sent them the pictures myself!" Sirius cut in. "To that bitch of a cousin and her husband."

As Lupin slapped his forehead in frustration, James spoke in a dry tone. _"I think a new rule is in order, don't taunt the gaoled nutters, especially the homicidal types."_

"Why would you do something like that?!" Remus shouted in frustration.

"Hey! I spent almost four years listening to that poofter beg for his mum, sobbing into his own shit. He wouldn't stop crying for days once he got started; it annoyed the hell out of me. I just thought that I'd send him a little present, that's all." Sirius groused.

"What does the Ministry have to say about this?!" Remus asked.

"Heh, I told them to stay the hell out of my business." Sirius snarled righteously; then he took in James and Remus' disbelieving looks.

"I uh, told Amelia that she could do whatever the hell she wanted." Black amended in a mellower tone

Remus and James still looked doubtful so Sirius came clean with a meek sigh. "Madam Bones of course has my trust in how best to deal with this menace and can of course assign as many aurors to protect me as she deems fit."

James sniggered.

Sirius scowled.

"Carrot?" Remus asked.

"I get empowered as a special investigator for magical law enforcement and an Order of Merlin Third Class if I survive, second class if I don't" Sirius explained.

"Juicy carrot." Remus commented.

"_Stick?"_ James asked.

"Marauder Investigations Magical gets closed down and I'm shoved in a deep dark hole with dementors to protect me from myself." Sirius huffed.

"Big stick." James commented, "Bet she knows who sent that picture, hm?"

"Let's get back to work." Sirius growled. Behind his back, Remus and James shared a look.

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London 1989

All in all Sirius had gone for nearly a year without him seeing neither hide nor hair of the murderous fugitive. He'd been harassed once by a dementer and the next time that it happened he used the memory of his first day of freedom and a certain pink cheeked auror. He got a foggy looking bear Patronus that lasted long enough to give the offending dementor a Flowing DDT, he probably should watch less T.V. at the office.

Tired of waiting for something to happen, he left the office at Marauders and took a taxi to Grimmauld Place, allowing the single auror still following him to apparate to an alley across the street a few houses away from his destination. Maybe taunting his mother would give him some peace of mind.

After convincing the taxi driver that he hadn't gotten the wrong address, the suavely dressed Sirius Black walked up the stairs and into number 12, already fumbling with a pair of earplugs, not noticing the piece of cork that fell into the doorway, keeping the front door from sealing completely.

He strode up to the painting by the stairs and sweetly spoke. "Hello mother!"

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London 1989

Navin slid quietly through the doorway using the loud screaming of an older woman to mask the sound of his movements. The figure of a man at the end of the corridor could be seen pointing an object around the corner, up a flight of stairs. Navin took a deep breath, placed the whistle in his mouth and took another step forward.

The man was a few steps out of reach of Bahl when he lifted what Navin thought was a gun. Determined to sound the alarm as he tackled the intruder, Navin Bahl blew his whistle as hard he could and he rushed forward.

And tripped over an umbrella stand…

The fall saved his live twice. First there was a shout and a flash of sickly green light that ruffled Navins hair as it passed silently over head and obliterated the front door in a shower of splintered, smoking wood. Naven had enough time to raise his terrified eyes to meet the crazed orbs of his would-be killer when his fall saved his life again. Whatever it was, looked like a sharply defined expanding ball of wavering air that took the man in the back with a roar of displaced wind and muted light, it cut him off at the knees.

Literally…

Everything beneath the man's neck and above his knees, with the exception of a nine inch stick that was raised overhead on the beginnings of a downward slashing motion, everything from collar to knee was crushed into a ball of mush by the ball that passed over Navins shivering head, digging a trench into the walls and creating a wide round hole where the smoldering doorway used to be.

Oh…

……………

……………

Shit…

……………………

Navin was still staring at the doorway when Ministry Aurors made it to the scene. Between the efforts of Mr. Black and a dark skinned man with a stud in his ear, they got Navin seated and recounting his part in the story. The man who interviewed him mentioned something about someone called Fennig being missing from his post. Afterwards he continued to stare blankly in the direction of the doorway when eventually someone made the mistake of pointing a wand at him.

He kicked the man in the balls, hard.

Then he trod on the writhing wizard's groin with all his might.

Then he jumped.

Sirius intervened by casting a shimmering blue between Bahl and the rest of the room, intercepting a fair number of curses. One of which clipped Black in the side of his leg, he ignored the wound as he looked worriedly at Bahl before speaking in a calming tone.

"Navin I'm sorry I took my eyes off of you; that man was out of line trying something like that. I forgot to tell them that you work for me, that guy was an-"

"Obliviator, I know, I'm sorry." Navin replied woodenly, "My little Asha got her letter a few days ago, that's probably why Mr. Prongs gave me this assignment."

Straightening his jacket Navin spoke. "I'll need a few days of paid leave." Sirius nodded. "I need to take Asha to Diagon Alley, could you give me this job's payment in galleons?" Sirius nodded again then he spoke. "You saved my life Navin, is there anything that I can do? Anything?"

Navin considered the other man's words. "A raise, a better health care plan and life insurance, definitely, life insurance. Do that and we're even, you don't owe me anything."

When Navin Bahl left number twelve no-one, not even the gang of hoodlums that had once robbed and beaten him as a taxi driver, no-one interfered with Navin Bahl on his way hometo his family; they didn't point any wands at him either.

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London Town House 1989

The argument was heated.

"You Had NO Right!" Sirius roared.

Remus tried to intervene but he was still recuperating from the rigors of the recent full moon.

"_You were taking the threat too lightly." _James began.

"He could have died!" Sirius exclaimed.

"You were taking the threat too lightly." Remus agreed.

"Don't you start!" Sirius snarled.

"_Are you angry at us or at yourself?"_ James ventured.

"Yes!!" Sirius bellowed.

"Yes for us or yes for you." Remus asked, bemused.

"All of the above!" Sirius exclaimed; and then he muttered, "He could have died."

"_You underestimate how important your life is to others, you wear yourself thin at work and then you spend the evening listening to your dead mother's painting, curse you for fun. You need something beyond vengeance to live for!"_ James cautioned.

"I'm sorry for what Mr. Bahl went through but you have to understand Sirius, had it not been him, then it would have been me in that corridor." Remus said resolutely.

"_Well, I was in that corridor, there wasn't much that I could do with you standing like a lump with your eyes clossed, off in your own world."_ James explained.

"You don't understand!" Sirius groaned. "I know those eyes, I've had those eyes, in that living room I'd have given him everything that I owned if only to rid him of that look, and all he wanted was a bit of life insurance!"

"_Don't we all?"_ James murmured.

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Leaky Cauldron 1991

Sirius stopped glaring a Snape and schooled his face and emotions. Sometimes just standing near to the man made him want to turn into a raving homicidal maniac. He made to follow after him but the boy that stood at the entrance shocked him to a stand still, he'd been expecting them to look alike, but still. He remembered the arrogant goof of a young boy with whom he'd formed a friendship over a shared joke and a healthy disrespect for authority. They were like brothers and for a second it was like he'd traveled back in time.

Then he saw the boy's green eyes and the spell broke.

James and Remus were absent today.

All one needed was a little life insurance.

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**AN: The hard part is trying to find the right balance without being long winded. It doesn't always work obviously. Also because I have a feeling that someone's going to mention this, Navin's internal commentary is simply the musing of someone who is about to do something rather stupid and confront a potentially armed agressor with a whistle. It is in no way a commentary on British gun control laws. TTFN. **


End file.
